From a purely military perspective, there can be little doubt that the U.S. surge in Iraq led by General David Petraeus is improving the near-term security situation on the ground. While 2007 was the deadliest year yet for U.S. forces, American casualties are at their lowest levels since March 2006. Iraqi civilian casualties are reportedly down 60% since June, while attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqis have dropped 55% since the start of the American troop build-up nine months ago. Some Iraqi towns and neighborhoods are beginning to see renewed economic activity, if not normalcy. And over the last several weeks, some of Iraq's two million refugees are starting to return home. (While their numbers remain in dispute, the U.S. military is worried about the explosive potential of refugees returning to their ethnically-cleansed neighborhoods.) It's no wonder Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), an early advocate of American withdrawal from Iraq, declared after a visit to Baghdad this week, "I think the 'surge' is working."

Murtha also noted that the Iraqis "have got to take care of themselves." After all, the surge strategy was designed, as both President Bush and General Petraeus have described it, to provide "breathing room" for political accommodation and national reconciliation in Iraq. There, the situation is infinitely more complicated.

The greatest impact on U.S. fortunes on the ground in Iraq has resulted from the burgeoning American alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in the increasingly common fight against Al Qaeda. For months, U.S. commanders have been striking deals with Sunni sheiks to eject Al Qaeda and its foreign fighters from their strongholds and safe havens in Anbar province. (As the Washington Post reported in October, some in the U.S. military believe "it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months.)" The U.S. has now enrolled over 75,000 Sunnis in "concerned local citizens" groups, with members paid $300 a month to patrol neighborhoods and man checkpoints. These U.S.-backed squads will increasingly target fleeing Al Qaeda elements now fueling the growing violence in the north of Iraq.

All of which is creating mounting problems for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. As part of its surge strategy, the United States is quickly establishing autonomous Sunni security forces loyal not to the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad, but to Sunni tribal leaders and their American allies. The very progress against Al Qaeda that is making American troops safer is creating the seeds of conflict with the Iraqi government. As McClatchy reports, al Maliki and his allies are none too happy about it:

Dr. Safa Hussein, Maliki's deputy national security adviser and the head of a committee tasked with reconciling Iraq's rival factions, said the government was increasingly concerned about what would take place once the United States no longer was supervising the "concerned citizens" groups closely.

"We have tens of thousands of people who are carrying weapons on a contract basis, and when their contracts are finished where will they go?" he asked. "The Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense can't absorb them all, and the problem is they are growing very rapidly and the Iraqi government doesn't have any control over that."

"When the U.S. leaves, what we'll have are two armies," said Sami al Askari, a Shiite lawmaker who speaks to Maliki daily. "One who's loyal to the government and one not loyal."

Which may explain the al Maliki government's interest in a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. American troops may be needed indefinitely to protect the Maliki government from sectarian violence or a Sunni coup attempt increasingly - and ironically - made possible by support from his U.S. allies. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now at The Brookings Institution described the quandary:

"There is a danger here that we are going to have armed all three sides: the Kurds in the north, the Shiite and now the Sunni militias...As the Shiites see the Sunnis getting closer to the Americans, that will only reinforce their concern that this is a hostile measure designed somehow to undermine their government."

If the "Declaration of Principles of Friendship and Cooperation" signed this week by Prime Minister Al Maliki and President Bush provides protection for the former, it serves other needs altogether for the latter. With Al Qaeda in Iraq teetering on the edge of defeat, Iraq is certainly not the "central front in the war on terror." But it remains the dream of American business, especially energy interests, to capture the concessions and preferential access to Iraqi oil resources promised by the statement of an "enduring relationship." And more than anything, U.S. bases in Iraq would constitute a potential bulwark against the expanding regional power of Shiite Iran.

Which just happens to be an ally of the Maliki government and its Shiite alliance partners. Two weeks ago, an al Maliki spokesman credited Iran for its reduced support of Muqtada al Sadr and other militias. As the Washington Post reported:

The turning point was an August visit by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Shiite-dominated Iran, where he told supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to choose between supporting the Shiite-led Iraqi government or other parties, spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

"Iran is showing more restraint in sending people and weapons to destabilize Iraq," al-Dabbagh.

That might also help explain the October 7 truce between Al Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). Maliki's Dawa party is part of the Hakim-led United Iraqi Alliance. Hakim is also the force behind the Badr Brigades, which like al Sadr's Mahdi Army is supplied with weapons by Iran. And despite his tough talk against Iran and its role in Iraq, President Bush has met with al Hakim three times, including White House visits in December 2006 and again just this week.

And so it goes. The very steps improving security on the ground deepen the political impasse in Iraq. Even fervent surge supporters like Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are running out of patience with the lack of progress on a new oil law, constitutional changes, regional elections, Kurdish autonomy and other promised steps towards Iraqi national reconciliation. Graham this week threatened to withhold American support and aid to the Maliki government:

"I do expect them to deliver. What would happen for me if there's no progress on reconciliation after the first of the year, I would be looking at ways to invest our money into groups that can deliver."

It's no wonder the White House is scaling back expectations, changing its goal of "national reconciliation" to mere "accommodation."

As the surge grinds on, President Bush for once is actually right to claim "we're making progress." (While polls show Americans increasingly believe that claim, they still don't believe in their President.) But the reduction in violence on the ground in Iraq is bringing the United States no closer to any end-game that can be described as winning. President Bush told Americans that we are fighting for an Iraq that can "govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself."

By that definition of victory, we can never leave Iraq.

Sounding more like Bill O'Reilly or Bill Donahue than the leader of the world's one billion Catholic faithful, Pope Benedict XVI today issued a stinging critique of atheism. In the encyclical titled Saved by Hope, the Pope assigned atheism responsibility for some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" in human history. But given his own history, Benedict might want to reread his admonition that "we must do all we can to overcome suffering."

Attacking the bogeymen of the French Revolution and Marxism, Pope Benedict declared of the atheism he claimed they spawned:

"It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope."

While leaving aside the essential roles played by the Enlightenment and western liberal democracy in advancing human dignity, enshrining individual liberty and reducing mass suffering, Benedict's history is apparently obscures the role of his own church. Charity, as the saying goes, begins at home.

After all, when it comes to the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice," the Crusades would surely appear on anyone's Top 10. Almost from the inception of his papacy, Benedict has also sent strong signals that he would not continue his predecessor's policy of dialog with and outreach to other faiths. In September 2006, Benedict created an uproar throughout the Muslim world with his Regensburg University speech approvingly citing a quote from 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus which derided Islam as "evil and inhuman." Despite a later apology of sorts, that episode was not the best start for someone looking to make historial amends.

Joseph Ratzinger's personal history should also give readers of Saved by Hope pause. Not because of the role young Ratzinger's church may or may not have played in abetting Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust or his own brief membership in the Hitler Youth. (Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League defended Benedict and his predecessor John Paul II alike, noting " While growing up, both of them experienced what hate can do, what totalitarianism can do, what ant-Semitism can do. Whatever those years were, they certainly haven't and aren't impacting on him negatively.")

No, it is Benedict's deep involvement in helping conceal some of the worst episodes of the global Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis. Since the 1990's, the plague of sex abuse cases has cost the Catholic Church in America almost $2 billion in settlements and led to the bankruptcy of five dioceses in the wake of the fist revelations in Boston. Yet, it was then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope John Paul II right-hand man on doctrinal matters, who brought Boston's disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law to the comfort - and cover - of the Vatican. Despite Law being implicated in the protection and relocation of 80 child abusing priests, Ratzinger brought Law to the Holy See, where he remains "a highly respected member of the Catholic Church's hierarchy in Rome." Apparently, Ratzinger believed his 2002 recommendation of a public day of penance by U.S. bishops was sufficient to cleanse the stain of clergy sexual abuse.

Given the magnitude of the ongoing scandal in the U.S. church, one might expect particular sensitivity by the Pope when it comes to domestic American politics. Yet despite all the sins of the American Church, Benedict instead seems focused on ensuring his conservative footprint in the U.S. In 2004, then Cardinal Ratzinger proclaimed that pro-choice Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry should not receive communion. (Ironically, Pope John Paul II himself had offered communion to the pro-choice mayor of Rome in 2000.) And just this May, Pope Benedict reiterated his policy of withholding communion from American Catholic politicians such as Rudy Giuliani, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson who fail to oppose abortion rights.

As the leader of his Church, Pope Benedict XVI by all means should speak to atheists around the world. It is only natural that the Vatican should concerns itself with their spiritual lives, even if only as potential members of the Catholic faith. But for this church and this Pope to lay history's greatest crimes and violent tragedies at the doorstep of atheism is, to quote Pope Benedict, a "violation of justice."

Over at the conservative Weekly Standard, there is despair and consternation at the picture of the Republican Party presented at last night's CNN/YouTube debate. While one column feared the "vaguely threatening parade" of the assembled GOP White House hopefuls, editor and Fox News commentator Fred Barnes lamented a debate that was "mortifying to the candidates." Apparently, the truth is not setting them free. Because the Party of Hate Americans saw on stage last night wasn't a caricature, but the reality of what the GOP has become.

Barnes summarized his angst over the embarrassing Republican display last night:

My wife Barbara exclaimed, "This is humiliating. This is really bad." Of course she was right. And then things got worse. This debate not only was mortifying to the candidates. It also should have been embarrassing to the viewers, especially Republican voters who might have been watching.

His colleague went much further in decrying the image of today's GOP as immigrant-loathing, gun-toting, gay-bashing hatefest:

So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes.

Which is to say, Americans got to see the true face of the Republican Party.

As I wrote two weeks ago, the Republicans have devolved into the Party of Hate. With its evangelical base splintered and big business supporters jumping ship, the only message seemingly uniting Republicans is disdain - of immigrants, of blacks, of gay Americans and above all, Muslims.

Heading into 2008, the Republicans are saddled with a bad product. The current Republican brand combines an unpopular President George W. Bush, an unpopular war in Iraq and unpopular positions across the gamut of domestic issues, all tainted by the GOP epidemic of corruption. The face of the GOP is now neither Lincoln nor Reagan, but Bush, Libby, Delay, Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Stevens and Fletcher. The enduring image of the Party is not Bush in a flight suit, but a Most Wanted Poster. And now the people who brought you Abu Ghraib, Terri Schiavo and Hurricane Katrina can only offer $100-a-barrel oil, a housing crisis, a credit crunch and saber rattling with Iran.

Its privatization agenda dead, the GOP has morphed into the party of big government conservatism, massive deficits, self-defeating American unilaterlism, and, above all, fear. All that remains to unite the fractured Republican Party and its amen corner is hatred. Of immigrants. Of African-Americans. Of gay Americans. Of Muslims here and around the world. Bereft of ideas and increasingly rejected by the American people, the conservative movement's profound identity crisis leaves it certain of only one thing: hatred of the other.

That grim reality, of course, is not grist for the conservative mill in the aftermath of last night's debate. Instead, the Republican amen corner decries supposed plants in the CNN audience and asks "is this what running for president of the greatest democracy in the world has become?" As Fred Barnes put it:

"By my count, of the 30-plus questions, there were 6 on immigration, 3 on guns, 2 on abortion, 2 on gays, and one on whether the candidates believe every word in the Bible. These are exactly the issues, in the view of liberals and many in the media, on which Republicans look particularly unattractive."

The Party of Hate is unattractive, indeed. But not merely to "liberals and many in the media", but to more and more of the American people every day.

Following a question as to whether Jesus would have supported the death penalty, the GOP White House hopefuls were confronted by a video of a Dallas man named Joseph. Holding the Bible in his hand, Joseph asked simply, "Do you believe every word of this book?" After initially stumbling about and seeking assistance from Mike Huckabee ("Wait a second, you're the minister. You're going to help me out on this one."), Rudy Giuliani offered this parochial school response:

"I think there are parts of the Bible that are interpretive. I think there are parts of the Bible that are allegorical. I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted in a modern context.

So, yes, I believe it. I think it's the great book ever written. I read it frequently. I read it very frequently when I've gone through the bigger crises in my life, and I find great wisdom in it, and it does define to a very large extent my faith. But I don't believe every single thing in the literal sense of Jonah being in the belly of the whale, or, you know, there are some things in it that I think were put there as allegorical."

Leave aside for the moment Giuliani's dubious claim to be a frequent reader of the Bible. (Clearly, he skipped the Sixth Commandment: "You shall not commit adultery.") The twice-divorced, pro-choice and frequently cross-dressing Giuliani admitted in 1999 "I don't attend Mass regularly," and proclaimed in August that "my religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests." That's probably a good idea. After all, Giuliani admitted, "I pray like a lawyer," adding, "I try to make a deal - get me out of this jam, and I'll start going back to church."

But Rudy knows allegory when he sees it. After all, when it comes to his own biography, allegory is Giuliani's favorite literary device.

In his morality play, Rudy, too, was metaphorically trapped in the belly of the beast (New York City). There, he fought the scourges of financial mismanagement, rampant crime and, more than anything else, Islamic terrorism. In Giuliani's mind, it may be the second greatest story ever told, but like the first, isn't literally true.

The record of the mayor of 9/11 contains some inconvenient truths. Giuliani, after all, in the wake of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 located his emergency management headquarters in the Towers complex. He approved a no-bid contract for Motorola radios which utterly failed New York's firefighters with horrific results on September 11, 2001. Giuliani's version of the good book of 9/11 also leaves out the emerging environmental disaster at Ground Zero while propagating some extravagant claims about his own heroic role:

"I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers...I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Unlike Jesus, Rudy Giuliani has clearly chosen the side of the money-changers. Rudy the Terror Fighter advocated his close friend Bernard Kerik, his former police commissioner and business associate, to head the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik has since been indicted, charged charging him with 16 counts of corruption, mail and tax fraud, obstruction of justice, and lying to the government. (Giuliani also counts among his close business partners Monsignor Alan Placa, an accused pedophile priest.) Worse still, in the aftermath of 9/11, Rudy's firm Giuliani and Associates won lucrative contracts from the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani. As it turns out, Al-Thani's family had harbored 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the 1990's and protected him from apprehension by the FBI. (It's no wonder Giuliani adamantly refuses to release his full client list.) And just yesterday, the Politico revealed that Giuliani sought to conceal $1 million in expenses over two years using obscure New York City accounts, costs associated with his security detail during his adulterous Hampton romps with his eventual third wife, Judith Nathan.

In the Bible, Jesus died for our sins. In the Gospel According to Rudy, Giuliani is dying for our votes. When it comes to the Gospel According to Rudy, Americans would do well to follow Giuliani's own advice in Wednesday's debate, "The reality is, I believe it, but I don't believe it's necessarily literally true in every single respect."

Rudy Giuliani has a new best friend. With Mitt Romney holding twin leads in Iowa and New Hampshire and Rudy's former wingman Bernard Kerik now under indictment, Giuliani's position as the national GOP presidential front-runner seemed increasingly precarious. Enter former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, whose surge in Iowa is just what the doctor ordered.

The Giuliani-Romney clash has been shaping up along familiar battle lines. Giuliani, the consensus front-runner with broad name recognition and support of the party establishment, is waging a national campaign designed to culminate in a sweep of the 22 "Super Tuesday" contests on February 5th.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is traveling the route of the insurgent, the dark horse. Through the mobilization of grassroots organizations and an influsion of cash, Romney hopes a surprisingly strong win in Iowa on January 3 will catapult him to victory five days later in his home base in New Hampshire. As I wrote in May, Romney is counting on the "Iowa Effect" to overturn the conventional wisdom about the inevitability of Giuliani and transform the race:

In a nutshell, the Iowa Effect is the complete upending of the predicted presidential primary landscape by a candidate's unexpected performance in the nation's first caucus. Riding a wave of adoring press coverage by a media eager to hype the tale of the underdog, the perceived winner in Iowa sweeps through New Hampshire and subsequent primary states to take (or at least seriously challenge for) the party's nomination.

The Iowa Effect is all about psychology, expectations and, more than anything else, momentum. In 2004, John Kerry's surprising win in Iowa produced a slingshot effect that took him through New Hampshire and succeeding primaries, while front-runner Howard Dean imploded within days. In 1984, Gary Hart's shocking second place finish in Iowa (he trailed Walter Mondale by 51%-16%) produced a 30 point swing and victory in New Hampshire in the span of just 8 days. In 2008, Mitt Romney is hoping to follow in their footsteps.

At it appeared to be working for Romney, that is, until last week. Governor Huckabee surged into a virtual dead heat with the former Massachusetts Governor. An ABC poll released last week showed Huckabee trailing Romney just 28% to 24%, while a new Strategic Vision survey put the deficit at only two points. (A Rasmussen poll completed yesterday actually shows Huckabee ahead 28% to 25%.)

Mike Huckabee's surprisingly strong performance reflects his own budding grassroots momentum. A charismatic campaigner, Huckabee is leveraging his second place showing at the Iowa straw poll in August. He also benefited from the departure of Sam Brownback, whose stillborn campaign was a competitor for conservative Christian votes. Perhaps more than any other factor, Huckabee, a former minister, is successfully mobilizing the evangelicals of Iowa, a group that constitutes a third of caucus-goers. (As the New York Times reports today, Romney's Mormon faith now appears to be hurting him among religious right voters in the Hawkeye state.)

However, while Mike Huckabee may deny Romney the benefit of the Iowa Effect, he may not reap the rewards, either. In New Hampshire, not a target rich environment for evangelical voters, Huckabee is trailing badly. With only 5% in a recent CNN/WMUR/UNH poll, he is running a distant fifth behind Romney (33%), John McCain (18%), Rudy Giuliani (16%) and even Ron Paul (8%). Fairing somewhat better in Michigan (January 15) and South Carolina (January 29), Huckabee has a lot of ground to make up in Florida, New York, California and other Super Tuesday states.

Right now, those states belong to Rudy Giuliani. Mike Huckabee's faith-based campaign may do nothing more than knock Team Romney off the rails.

And that makes Mike Huckabee Rudy Giuliani's best friend.

"I know that this president does not harbor any resentments. Never has."

Of course not. That would be out of character for George W. Bush.

Dating back to his days on the campaign trail, then Governor Bush showed nothing but admiration and grudging respect for political foes, American enemies abroad and the media alike. During the 2000 election campaign, Bush fondly referred to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a "major league a**hole." In 1999, Governor Bush asked family friend Saudi Prince Bandar, "Why should I care about North Korea?", a prelude to the warm feelings he expressed for its leader in 2002, "I loathe Kim Jong Il." Even his father's old tormenter Saddam Hussein brought a twinkle to President Bush's eye, "We need to get Saddam Hussein...that motherf**ker tried to take out my dad." And as the Israeli paper Ha'aretz recalled, President Bush confided to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he would even treat Osama Bin Laden, a lethal enemy of the United States, with dignity and respect, "I will screw him in the ass."

To fully judge the largeness of the man, the extent of his humility and the generosity of his spirit, one must the tenderness and compassion George W. Bush shows for the weakest and most needy among us. The elderly and the infirm, the down-trodden and the criminal, friend and foe alike have all witnessed President Bush's fulfillment of his campaign 2000 promise:

"I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect."

Bush, for example, made a plea to John Kerry during their 2004 race to maintain the fairness in the tax code. "The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." And when former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill betrayed him in a tell all book released in 2004, President Bush didn't speak out against his friend. Bush just wanted to make sure O'Neill hadn't inadvertently leaked any sensitive material to the press.

The President also extended his compassionate conservatism to young and old alike. In January 2005, Bush showed his concern for the well-being a reporter who questioned him regarding his Social Security plan. "Yes," he said, "Because you're not a senior citizen yet. Acting like one, however...Faulty memory." Two years later, he comforted a 13 year old girl who began crying for some reason during a Cleveland town hall meeting.

President Bush's caring for those Americans with disabilities is legendary. In June 2006, Bush asked legally blind reporter Paul Wallsten, "Are you going to ask that question with shades on?" adding, " I'm interested in the shade look, seriously." Just weeks earlier in May, the President at a Medicare event warmly greeted a man in a wheelchair, "You look mighty comfortable."

George W. Bush always has an open heart and open mind for those wrestling with the demons of substance abuse. A reformed drinker himself now "right with God," Bush sees his faith-based programs helping everyone:

"What that means is if you're the Methodist church and you sponsor an alcohol treatment center, they can't say only Methodists, only Methodists who drink too much can come to our program. All drunks are welcome, is what the sign ought to say."

President Bush even stood by his friend and Texas Rangers baseball star Rafael Palmeiro after his denial to Congress that he had used performance enhancing drugs. Despite Palmeiro's later suspension for steroid use, Bush said:

"Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him. He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him. Still do."

And when Vice President Cheney's chief-of-staff Scooter Libby disgraced his President by outing (and concealing his role) covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, Bush showed his infinite capacity for forgiveness. He commuted Libby's sentence and emotionally declared, "The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged," also noting, "His wife and young children have also suffered immensely."

Dana Perino knows her history. George W. Bush is truly a man who would never "harbor any resentments."

When it comes to the demographic make-up of his future cabinet, Republican White House hopeful and legendary flip-flopper Mitt Romney proved he can completely reverse his position in the span of just a single day. Appearing on CNN's Situation Room Monday, Romney told Wolf Blitzer he rejected the use of quotas in appointing cabinet members. But according to the Christian Science Monitor today, Mitt does indeed have a quota for the number of American Muslims in a future Romney cabinet. That number, as it turns out, is zero.

Speaking with CNN's Blitzer, Romney was quick to reject the criticism lobbed by African-American conservative commenter and former Congressman J.C. Watts that the Romney campaign (like that of Rudy Giuliani) had no black staffers. The composition of the Romney campaign, like a Romney presidential cabinet, Mitt claimed, would be based purely on merit:

BLITZER: The charge -- the charge is that you have no diversity in your inner circle, no African-Americans who are really involved in your decision-making process.

ROMNEY: Well, I do have inner-circle members of my team that are African-American and also Hispanic-American and people of various backgrounds. So, he just happens to be ill-informed.

But I also think that suggesting that we have to fill spots based on checking off boxes of various ethnic groups is really a very inappropriate way to think about how we staff positions.

I'm very pleased that, among my Cabinet members, for instance, I had several African-American individuals. I had people of different backgrounds. But I don't go in every circumstance I'm in and say, OK, how many African-Americans, how many Hispanic-Americans, how many Asian-Americans, and fill boxes that way.

I fill responsibilities based upon people's merit and their skill. And, sometimes, it includes many ethnic minorities. And, other times, it includes different minorities.

Which is not what Romney told Mansoor Ijaz. On the Christian Science Monitor web site this same Monday (as noted by Kevin Drum), the former Massachusetts painted a picture of a Romney cabinet where Muslims need not apply:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

Forget for the moment that the size of the Muslim population in the United States (estimated at 5 to 7 million) now rivals that of Jews - and Mormons. Ignore, too, the Constitution's ban on religious tests. Romney's problem is not one of mathematics, but of pandering to the conservative GOP primary base. Through his repeated statements conflating all Muslims worldwide and his shockingly misguided ad "Jihad," Romney has made it clear he intends to win the hearts and minds of right-wing Republican voters by losing the hearts and minds of Muslims in the United States - and around the world.

Alarmingly and erroneously equating Sunni and Shiite, the guilty and the innocent, Romney in May claimed he has more than Osama Bin Laden in his crosshairs:

"But I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another. This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has trumpeted his business experience as an asset his opponents lack. But America's would-be Second MBA President apparently never showed up for diversity training. In Mitt Romney's new Jim Crow cabinet, Muslim Americans apparently will have no place.

UPDATE 1: Romney spokesman Kevin Madden issued a statement confirming both Mitt's jihad against jihadism and his comfort level with discriminating against Muslim Americans when it comes to future cabinet positions:

"At this point, we're not focused on what Gov. Romney's Cabinet might look like. But the governor does not believe that in order to effectively fight radical jihad you need to have Muslims serving in the Cabinet."

UPDATE 2: Mitt Romney is now claiming that Mansoor Ijaz misquoted him. Given the distance from "based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified," it would seem Romney still has some explaining to do:

"No, that's not what I said. His question was, Did I need to have a Muslim in my Cabinet in order to confront radical jihad, or would it be important to have a Muslim in my Cabinet?' And I said no, I don't think you need a Muslim in the Cabinet to take on radical jihad any more than we needed a Japanese American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature."

UPDATE 3: Over at the Huffington Post, Mansoor Ijaz responds and calls Mitt Romney a liar:

"This guy is lying now to the American people," said Ijaz. "He probably never imagined someone would come out and write a piece the way I did. And I think he made a serious mistake in judgment in trying to disown what he said."

"A lot of options will hopefully be available," Lott said. "I am not really involved in negotiations...there are some opportunities out there I want to be able to consider."

Here are just some of the future careers Trent Lott might pursue:

Editor, Southern Partisan Magazine. Lott would be a fitting leader for Southern Partisan, a journal of ante bellum nostalgia whose mission its web site describes as "under construction." In 1984, after all, Lott took to the pages of the neo-Confederate publication to offer his own personal rebel yell, referring to the Civil War as "the war of aggression."

Washington Lobbyist, Council of Conservative Citizens. Lott would be a natural choice to head the CCC, the latter day incarnation of the White Citizens' Councils of Jim Crow days. As the CCC's political epitaph for Lott today noted, "When Trent Lott stated that America would've been better off had Strom Thurmond been elected in 1948 he was dead on right." Though unhappy with Lott's later positions over immigration and his denunciations of the group, CCC members no doubt fondly remember Lott's 1992 praise for the organization.

President, Conservative Clothing Company. Rumors are swirling that Lott may be tapped to head a new firm offering designer clothes for conservatives. The unnamed company claims its apparel will be the rage among "anyone who's anyone in the GOP." Among its featured products is the "White Hot Republican Hoody," a "snowy white robe and matching hood made of fire resistant fabric to withstand even the hottest cross-burning."

CEO, Cracker Jack Genes. Lott purportedly has an offer on the table from Cracker Jack Genes, a genealogy firm specializing in tracking the down the illegitimate black offspring of prominent segregationists. Hoping to capture the public imagination following the revelations surrounding the surprising familial ties of Strom Thurmond and Al Sharpton, CJG promises customers "we can keep a secret, at least til election day."

President, Stars and Bars Restaurants. Speculation also abounds that Lott may jump at the chance to run "Stars and Bars," a new chain of southern-themed bar and grille restaurants. Its drink list is said to include "Red Bull Run," while the appetizer menu features "Dixie Chick 'N' Wings."

Consultant to Sunni Political Parties in Iraq. Leaders of an alliance of Sunni political parties in Baghdad are reported to be contemplating hiring Lott as a consultant to help formulate their parliamentary strategy. The minority coalition is said to be impressed with Lott's work since the 2006 mid-term elections, where he helped lead the Senate GOP from its position of "Up or Down Vote" to unprecedented obstructionism. "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail," Lott said earlier this year, adding, "So far it's working for us."

As John Kyl (R-AZ), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John Cornyn (R-TX) seek to replace Lott in the GOP leadership post, the Politico reports, "the announcement took Capitol Hill by surprise because Lott, the former majority leader, seemed to be relishing his job as minority whip." Unlike the rest of this article, you can't make stuff like that up.

As Condoleezza Rice prepares to host the Middle East summit in Annapolis this week, her State Department has issued an updated historical timeline of American efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The timeline is a fascinating document both for what it reveals and what it leaves out. The rise of Hamas and its election victories are mentioned nowhere. That might just be because President Bush's hands-off policy of malign neglect is in part responsible for it.

The State Department's "Middle East Peace Chronology" lists key events, American diplomatic initiatives and other international efforts dating back to the Camp David accords brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978. The Oslo Accords, peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, the Wye River summit are all described. The 2003 premiership and later 2005 presidential election Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas ("Mahmoud Abbas wins the Palestinian presidential elections with 62.3 percent of the votes cast") are detailed. The November 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, an act of God central to President Bush's policy in the region, is listed as well.

What is glaringly absent from the Condi Rice's picture of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is any mention of Hamas. That group, part political party, part social organization, part terrorist organization, is excluded despite constituting the central reality on the ground over the past two years. Its forces now control Gaza, having routed the Fatah cadres there. And in January 2006, Hamas won an overwhelming victory in the Palestinian elections, capturing 76 of 132 seats in the parliament to only 43 for Abbas' Fatah.

Given the centrality of democracy promotion to the Bush Doctrine, the omission of the Hamas victory at the polls might seem puzzling. But that seeming mystery disappears upon reflection. After all, the rise of Hamas was not only a disaster for the Bush administration; it was the by-product of its own strategy in the region. And worse still, no one in President Bush's cabinet saw it coming.

In 2006, Secretary of State Rice admitted as much. As the New York Times detailed:

"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. "It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse."

Despite the infusion of American cash and USAID resources to Abbas' party in the run-up to the elections, Hamas won its smashing victory. But in retrospect, that outcome should have been no surprise. The Palestinian voters rejected the rampant corruption and economic stagnation of the Fatah government, as well as its utter failure to make headway in countering the Israeli occupation. And perhaps just as important, President Bush's years-long refusal to negotiate with Yasser Arafat left Fatah impotent and emasculated.

In March 2002, Israeli forces assaulted Arafat's Ramallah compound in the wake of Palestinian terrorist attacks and the PLA's efforts to acquire weapons. By that summer, President Bush in essence endorsed the Ariel Sharon's position that Arafat was "irrelevant" and "an enemy" that "will be isolated." In a major address on June 24, 2002, Bush announced that the United States would no longer work with Arafat's Palestinian Authority, a government he claimed had "no authority" and was "unaccountable." Calling for "new Palestinian leadership," Bush ironically foreshadowed the disastrous Hamas landslide to come:

"I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts."

But only now, in the twilight of his presidency, does President Bush offer the appearance of engagement in helping resolve the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perhaps the central factor in global Muslim animus (and Al Qaeda propaganda) towards the United States, the Israeli occupation was not an issue on which Bush would expend effort and political capital.

As the State Department timeline shows, that was clear from the inception of the Bush presidency. Rejecting Bill Clinton's approach of direct, personal American involvement, Bush's unique combination of arrogance and petulance endured the United States would not only not be an honest broker between the Palestinians and the Israelis; it wouldn't be a broker at all. Whereas Clinton hosted summits in the U.S., traveled to the Palestinian territories, partnered with regional leaders to convene conferences in Europe and the Middle East, George W. Bush preferred to passively remain on the sidelines. Even his occasional statements on the conflict came from the comfort of home:

• September 20, 2006. President Bush meets with the Palestinian president on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly...
• April 14, 2004. President Bush sends a letter...
• June 24, 2002. President Bush, speaking from the White House, calls for new Palestinian leadership...
• April 4, 2002. President Bush, speaking from the White House, outlines his vision...

And so it goes. On the eve of the U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference at the Naval Academy, the Bush administration lowers expectations. While President Bush will speak at the event and host a diplomatic dinner for the attendees from Arab countries including Syria, he will play no hands-on role in driving the process forward. As former Clinton Middle East envoy Dennis Ross described the agenda-less conference just last week:

"You can't just have everybody convene in what was going to be a conference. And I'm - then I guess it became a meeting. Pretty sooner it'll be a get-together and before we're done, it's going to be a hoedown."

A hoedown, at least, is something the Texan George W. Bush understands. We'll just have to check back next week to see if it appears in Condi Rice's official history.

This week, Republican White House hopeful John McCain denounced George W. Bush's unprecedented use of presidential signing statements. As well he should. After all, it was President Bush's December 30, 2005 signing statement on McCain's amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act that made waterboarding and other acts of torture the continuing policy of the United States.

On Monday, McCain announced that as President, he would reject signing statements altogether:

"I would never issue a signing statement. It is wrong, and it should not be done."

Given his betrayal by Bush over the torture of terrorist detainees, McCain's firm position is unsurprising.

With his signing statement attached to the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, Bush himself sought to create a legal basis for his administration's past and future criminality. In a nutshell, Bush signed into law a bill he had every intention of continuing to violate.

Bush, of course, had opposed John McCain's torture bill throughout the fall of 2005. But when the House and Senate passed McCain's amendment to the defense authorization bill by veto proof margins, Bush held a press conference on December 15 with McCain, announcing his support for the language explicitly saying that that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in US custody is illegal regardless of where they are held.

As the Boston Globe reported, that supposed compromise lasted just as long as it took for President Bush to issue his signing statement two weeks later on December 30. When it comes to what constitutes "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees," the President proclaimed that he indeed would be the decider:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

That shocking presidential power grab, along with Alberto Gonzales' 2005 lies to Congress about the administration's torture policy, served to emasculate John McCain's amendment. It's no wonder he's vowed of future legislation in a McCain presidency that he "would only sign it or veto."

The new citizenship "frontlog" is largely the result of a steep increase in application fees. After July30, 2007, the processing fee, which now includes the cost of electronic fingerprinting, jumped over 50% from $410 to $675. The new fees, combined with immigrant anxiety over the tenor of the immigration debate in Washington, produced a deluge of new citizenship applications to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The volume swelled to 1.4 million between October 2006 and September 2007, a doubling from 731,000 the previous year. As a result, the naturalization process that once took five months to complete is now forecast to last 16 to 18 months.

Long enough, that is, to potentially keep hundreds of thousands of new, primarily minority voters from the ballot box in 2008.

Coming at a time when Hispanic voters are returning to the Democratic Party (in part due to anti-immigration zeal of the Republicans), administration officials were quick to deny political motivations for the potential disenfranchisement of new American citizens:

"I really want to target the elections," USCIS Director Emilio T. Gonzalez told the Associated Press in an interview published Tuesday. "I really want to get as many people out there to vote as possible."

Aides, however, contradicted him. "We are going to process these cases as responsibly and as quickly as we can, but we're not focused on any of the election cycle," Aytes said. USCIS spokesman Bill Wright emphasized that political calculations played no role in agency decisions. "Any implication of that is ludicrous," he said.

Americans could be forgiven for believing otherwise. As I wrote last year in the run-up to the 2006 mid-term elections ("Divide, Suppress and Conquer"), suppressing minority (read Democratic) voter turn-out is part of the two-pronged Republican electoral strategy. (The other, of course, is mobilizing the conservatives' own base through red-meat issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and other fronts in culture war.) To drive down the participation of potential Democratic and independent voters, the GOP at the state and national level has pursued unprecedented redistricting, new curbs on registration, onerous new ID requirements and aggressive polling place eligibility challenges. (The ham-handed purge of U.S. attorneys by Alberto Gonzales and President Bush's minions at the Justice Department was just another element in the Republican strategy of voter suppression.)

This naturalization nightmare comes just as the Republican Party is witnessing the complete reversal of its temporary gains among Hispanic voters. Republicans are losing the ground they had gained among the nation's rapidly growing Hispanic communities, now totaling 43 million. While John Kerry carried only 53% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, by 2006 Democrats won 69% support among Hispanics who went to the polls. With its tough talk on immigration and the absence of its presidential candidates from the September Univision and other debates targeting minority audiences, the GOP is stoking the fires of xenophobia among its base at the expense of Hispanic voters. As Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza put it, "It's not just that they are not coming. It's that some of them are visibly insulting us."

(The disturbing poll numbers, along with the alarms raised by Newt Gingrich and former RNC chief Ken Mehlman, explain the GOP candidates' change of heart. All will now attend a rescheduled Univision debate on December 9.)

The implications of this citizenship imbroglio are clear:

"We have a huge concern on the impact of efforts for people to be able to vote in time for the primaries," said William A. Ramos, Washington spokesman for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which along with Spanish-language media and labor unions has supported voter-registration efforts in potential swing states with large immigrant populations, including California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida.

Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the 1.9 million-member Service Employees International Union, said immigrants who want to assimilate into U.S. culture and politics are being let down. "I think the overwhelming response of immigrants is 'We do want to be part of this country, but we also want our voices heard,' " he said. "Unfortunately, due to the incompetence of the federal agency, they may not be able to register their opinions."

Whether the result of Bush administration incompetence or intent, the prospect of a new wave of potentially Democratic voters barred from the ballot box no doubt warms the cockles of Republican hearts. And Americans are left to wonder if that is no accident.

Just one day after excerpts from the upcoming Scott McClellan tell all book suggested President Bush lied about the roles of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair, the publisher is now back-tracking on the explosive claim. But despite a spokesman's assertion that McClellan "did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him," a seemingly forgotten 2005 story from the New York Daily News suggests otherwise.

As Perrspectives, Talking Points Memo, the Washington Note and other blogs noted in October 2005, the New York Daily News' Tom DeFrank revealed that President Bush was apoplectic with Karl Rove in the fall of 2003 over his role in the outing of Valerie Plame:

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak...the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger..."Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

(The DeFrank piece apparently is no longer available for free from the New York Daily News web site. The link leads only to the paper's home page. The full text of "Bush Whacked Rove on CIA Leak" is available for a fee.)

That picture of George W. Bush beside himself with rage in 2003 doesn't square with the McClellan retreat signaled by his publisher today:

Peter Osnos, the founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan's book in April, tells NBC from his Connecticut home that McCLellan, "Did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him."

Osnos says when McClellan went before the White House press corps in 2003 to publicly exonerate Libby and Rove, the problem was that his statement was not true. Osnos said the president told McClellan what "he thought to be the case." But, he says, McClellan believes, "the president didn't know it was not true."

As I detailed yesterday, on October 7, 2003, President Bush did what comes naturally and played dumb when it came to the identity of the "senior administration official" responsible for smearing Ambassador Joe Wilson and betraying his CIA agent wife Valerie Plame:

"I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials. I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth."

As it turns out, President Bush wasn't telling the truth. But on this as on so many othr matters, the American should have known George W. Bush was lying. After all, his lips were moving.

The New York Times' recent report that the United States has been secretly helping Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal contained another revelation. As with its 2005 expose of the Bush administration's illegal NSA domestic surveillance program, the Times sat on the Pakistan story at the request of the White House. Contrary to the repeated claims of President Bush and his amen corner, the New York Times has been more than deferential in letting the White House determine "all the news that's fit to print."

As the Times details, the Bush administration launched a $100 million program in the wake of the September 11 attacks to help the Musharraf government safeguard its nuclear weapons and material caches. That aid has included the shipment of sophisticated nuclear detection equipment, the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of training facilities in Pakistan. After internal debate, the Bush administration decided against offering Islamabad American "permissive action links" (PAL) technology, used to "keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorizations."

As it turns out, the New York Times held off on publishing the Pakistan nuclear security program for over three years:

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan's arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

As the Politico details, the past statements of Pakistani officials, the current political instability in Pakistan and the withdrawal of the White House request led the New York Times to proceed with publication of the story now:

Gordon Johndroe, White House National Security Council spokesman, told the Politico that "it was determined in 2004 that publication of the information would be harmful."

But subsequently, Johndroe said, details of the secret program have "slowly, over time, become more public." For that reason, he added, "there was no point in still maintaining our objection to publication."

"We have to be very careful in choosing when to ask a media outlet not to run something," Johndroe said. "We have a responsibility not to hold them to an agreement when it is no longer necessary."

That was not the case, however, with the New York Times' December 2005 revelations regarding the NSA's clandestine program of domestic surveillance. Despite the almost certain illegality of President Bush's regime of domestic wiretapping without warrants, the Times withheld publication for over a year.

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Ironically, that delay was particularly fortuitous for George W. Bush. By sitting on the damaging story until after the 2004 election, the New York Times may have helped ensure Bush's return to the White House for four more years.

Of course, that did nothing to assuage the fury of President Bush, the Republican leadership and its echo chamber among the conservative chattering classes. On December 19th, 2005, President Bush raged about what he deemed "a shameful act" that is "helping the enemy". Claiming he didn't order an investigation, Bush added "the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with a full investigation" At a subsequent press conference that same day, Alberto Gonzales suggested the inquiry - and retribution - that was to come. And as the controversy over the NSA program mounted, the President's right-wing allies called for the prosecution of Times' reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.

The President and his defenders have short memories. After all, New York Times played an essential role in helping the White House sell the invasion of Iraq. Judith Miller and other Times' writers were indispensable in propagating the Bush administration's fraudulent claims concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It was no accident that Vice President Cheney in September 2002 referred to the paper of record as the definitive source on Iraq's acquisition of aluminum tubes for its nuclear program, misinformation the administration itself had provided the Times. For its part in enabling the war on Iraq, one would think the New York Times deserves conservatives' gratitude, not venom.

Back in 1962, James Reston of the New York Times honored President John F. Kennedy's urgent request to wait before publishing what he knew about Soviet missiles in Cuba. That respite let JFK address the nation on the Cuban missile crisis and formulate his blockade strategy that ultimately helped the United States defuse a potential nuclear showdown.

Now, with the Pakistan nuclear security story as with the NSA blockbuster, the New York Times has been more than deferential to the Bush White House in balancing national security concerns with the American people's right to know (especially about administration lawbreaking). As the Iraq fiasco shows, the Times if anything has been too compliant, its response too Pavlovian (if not that of a lap dog). The White House said sit and the paper sat. Bad dog. No biscuit.

In his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong with Washington, McClellan claims the President and Vice President were central in the disinformation campaign he waged for over two weeks from the White House podium in the fall of 2003:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself.

McClellan's desire to clear his name is understandable. After all, as the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame and the smearing of her husband Joe Wilson gathered steam in September 2003, McClellan distributed patent falsehoods to the White House press corps on an almost daily basis.

For example, in an almost comical briefing on September 23, 2003, McClellan insisted that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with Plame's exposure by columnist Robert Novak:

Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, "The President knows" that Karl Rove wasn't involved. How does he know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove --

Q But how does --

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into conversations that the President has with advisors or staff or anything of that nature; that's not my practice.

Q But the President has a factual basis for knowing that Karl Rove --

MR. McCLELLAN: I said it publicly. I said that --

Q But I'm not asking what you said, I'm asking if the President has a factual basis for saying -- for your statement that he knows Karl Rove --

MR. McCLELLAN: He's aware of what I've said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it.

Just two weeks later on October 7, McClellan repeated his prevarication about the professed innocence of Rove and Libby:

Q Scott, you have said that you, personally, went to Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that, and can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?

MR. McCLELLAN: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this, there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that's exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They're good individuals, they're important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt of that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.

Q So you're saying -- you're saying categorically those three individuals were not the leakers or did not authorize the leaks; is that what you're saying?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's correct. I've spoken with them.

With his cognitively challenged press secretary safely leading the way, it's no wonder President Bush declared the same day that the Plame leaker would likely never be found:

"Well, the investigators will ask our staff about what people did or did not do. This is a town of -- where a lot of people leak. And I've constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information. And I want to know, I want to know the truth. I want to see to it that the truth prevail. And I hope we can get this investigation done in a thorough way, as quickly as possible...

Randy, you tell me, how many sources have you had that's leaked information that you've exposed or have been exposed? Probably none. I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials. I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth. That's why I've instructed this staff of mine to cooperate fully with the investigators -- full disclosure, everything we know the investigators will find out. I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers. But we'll find out."

Americans, of course, can be forgiven for doubting the veracity of Scott McClellan. After weeks of serving as the White House whipping boy over PlameGate, McClellan switched to his incessant "ongoing investigation" defense. As in October 2005 following the indictment of Scooter Libby, he is now claiming that his prior statements are "no longer operative."

As for President Bush, we now know the truth. One "senior administration official" was convicted on four charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, only to see his sentence commuted by the President. And as for candidate George W. Bush's 2000 promise to "ask not only what is legal but what is right ", there was one problem. To use the words of Scott McClellan: it was not true.

"Scooter" was convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for his part in covering up the effort to reveal the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Ironically, Scooter had previously defended Marc Rich, a turkey pardoned by Bill Clinton. Calling him "fair game," President Bush concluded that Scooter's sentence to be stuffed in jail for 30 months was "excessive."

An alternate bird, called "Fredo" according to the anonymous White House sources, will also be pardoned on Tuesday. The prospective pardon prevents Fredo's future prosecution for lying under oath to Congress and for conflict of interest charges arising from his squelching a Justice Department investigation into his role in the illegal NSA domestic surveillance program.

"Scooter" and "Fredo" are the seventh pair of turkeys to receive Thanksgiving clemency from President Bush. In 2006, "Flyer and Fryer" were pardoned for their roles in destroying secret service records of the White House visits of K Street lobbyist Jack Abramoff'. The year before, "Marshmellow and Yam" were spared execution for masterminding bid rigging, contract fraud and other acts of war profiteering for Halliburton. In 2004, "Biscuits" was pardoned for his election fraud conviction stemming from the Swift Boating of John Kerry. His alternate, "Gravy," received clemency for his role in authorizing waterboarding and other measures he deemed "quaint" later employed by CIA interrogators.

Earlier recipients of President Bush's Thanksgiving Day pardons included "Stars" and "Stripes" in 2003. The two fundraising Pioneers from President Bush's 2000 election campaign had been found guilty on multiple charges of fraud and securities violations stemming from their tenures as Enron CEO and CFO, respectively. ("Stars," whom Bush denied was a close friend, later died of a heart attack while awaiting the outcome of his appeal.) In 2002, President Bush spared "Katie" from the oven, offering her forgiveness for lying to investigators about the membership of Dick Cheney's energy task force. And in 2001, the new President pardoned "Liberty" and "Freedom." The two had been convicted in 1991 for insider trading while on the management team with Bush at Harken Energy. (The SEC ultimately decided not to pursue action against Bush himself, who pocketed $848,000 in the scheme.)

For the history of President Bush's Thanksgiving Day pardons, visit here.

UPDATE: President Bush has officially granted his 2007 Thanksgiving pardons. "Scooter" and "Fredo" have been freed under news aliases, "May" and "Flower."

In the span of just a few days, Mitt Romney's Mormon faith has moved to the front burner of the 2008 presidential election. In New Hampshire, mysterious opposition push polls branded Mormonism a cult, a smear Romney declared "un-American." That development came after the candidate suggested he would likely renege on an earlier promise to offer a Kennedyesque explanation of the role his religion would play in a potential presidency. While there are, of course, many legitimate reasons to not to vote for Mitt Romney, his religious faith should not be one of them. Sadly, to the degree that his Mormon beliefs are now a campaign issue, Mitt Romney himself is largely responsible for it.

Romney's self-made trap began with his 2006 declaration that religious faith is a prerequisite for being President of the United States. "People in this country,' Romney told Fox News, "want a person of faith to lead them as their president." But on his own religiosity, Romney has insisted, Americans must take him at his word.

Unfortunately for the self-proclaimed heir to Ronald Reagan, Americans have followed the Gipper's mantra of "trust but verify" when it comes to Romney's religion. In August, WHO radio host Jan Mickelson took him up on it, and questioned Romney about his Mormon faith. An agitated Romney complained he was not "running as a Mormon" and that Mickelson was "trying to tell me I'm not a faithful Mormon."

Despite his protestations now as during his 1994 Senate run against Ted Kennedy ("I'm not running for cardinal"), Romney brought this kind of investigation upon himself. In a February 2007 interview in South Carolina, Romney acknowledged Americans' natural curiosity about his faith. In May, Romney gave a graduation address at Pat Robertson's Regent University, despite the latter's past description of Mormonism as a "cult." And in July, Romney signaled he would likely follow in the footsteps of John F. Kennedy and deliver a major speech describing his Mormon faith and how it would inform his presidency:

"I have thought about that. I haven't made a final decision, but it's probably more likely than not. It's probably too early for something like that. At some point it's more likely than not, but we'll see how things develop."

As it turns out, not so much. Using his campaign team as a human shield, Romney last week apparently decided that discretion is the better part of valor, at least for now:

"The political advisors tell me no, no, no, it's not a good idea. Draws too much attention to that issue alone. But I sorta like the idea anyway, and will probably do it at some point."

Making matters worse, having raised religiosity as a requirement for the occupant of the Oval Office, Romney has since been careful to blur the distinctions between his Mormonism and mainline Protestant faiths (often to the dismay of his own co-religionists). As Josh Patashnik wrote in the New Republic, Romney has repeatedly downplayed fundamental Mormon doctrines including the Baptism of the Dead and the past and future visits of Jesus Christ to America:

During an interview earlier this year with George Stephanopoulos, the presidential candidate disputed the suggestion that Christ would someday return to the United States rather than the Middle East. Mormons, he said, believe "that the Messiah will come to Jerusalem...It's the same as the other Christian tradition."

This was both technically correct and completely misleading: The church's position is that, while Christ will indeed appear at the Mount of Olives, he will also build a new Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri, which will serve as the seat of his 1,000-year reign on Earth. Romney had conveniently neglected to mention this part of his church's doctrine.

Needless to say, his fellow Mormons were none too pleased. "Brother Romney is playing a little bit of a political game with his answer," one church official told Lee Benson of the Deseret Morning News--in a column noting that Romney's comment had "caused more than a few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints...to scratch their heads as if to say, 'What the flip?'"

Evangelical voters not only dominate the Republican primaries, they also constitute the competition when it comes to proselytizing for new followers. (While polls show that about one quarter of Americans would not vote - or are less likely to vote - for a Mormon, that figure reaches 36% among evangelicals.) While his outreach to Pat Robertson was ultimately unsuccessful, Romney was able to secure the backing of conservative movement founding father Paul Weyrich and Robert Taylor, the dean of Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Despite the 2000 assertion by Bob Jones III that Catholicism and Mormonism are "cults which call themselves Christian," Taylor proclaimed:

"The fact that I'm seen as a Religious Right person would hopefully get others to step out for him."

To get more of the likes of Taylor to step out for him, Mitt Romney will have to walk a tightrope. He must speak of the central importance of faith without elaborating on his own. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, encouraged Romney to follow in John F. Kennedy's footsteps and address the issue head on:

"Nobody else can close that deal, so I encouraged him to give a Kennedy-style, Greater Houston Ministerial Association-style speech, in his own words."

But when John F. Kennedy said, "I do not speak for my church on public matters -- and the church does not speak for me," he had not made religious faith a sine qua non of his campaign. He famously met with Baptist leaders to explain that his Catholic faith, one shared by tens of millions of Americans, would not govern his decisions as President. But after declaring religious faith a prerequisite for office, Mitt Romney refuses to discuss his own, one which remains a mystery to most Americans.

A