Tuesday Roundup: Guarding the Fort

It is unsurprising that everyone's still talking about Bush commuting Scooter Libby's jail sentence yesterday afternoon. The Washington Post gets the thumbs-up for going the extra mile with investigative reporting to find out which advisers Bush spoke to in making that decision. Turns out, not many.

On the short list WaPo was able to drum up: outgoing Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett; Fred Fielding, his legal counsel; and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. Conspicuously not on the list: chief prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, any of the lawyers at the Justice department, and — the big question mark — Vice President Dick Cheney. It's hard to believe he didn't have a hand in this decision, especially considering how glowingly he talked about Libby to the press after his conviction; then again, after last week's scathing expose about how he had his thumb in far too many pies for comfort, maybe there's something to that. Either way, it's pretty clear that Bush is trying to mitigate any damage done by this. He gets to say that he wasn't railroaded into this by party line interests, and Republican allies get to celebrate Libby's not having to go to jail without having to worry about having any mud on their hands in the form of defending a convicted criminal come the '08 elections.

Down Congress way, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has decided to endorse the bill currently in the House to increase gas mileage standards to 32 miles per gallon from the current 25. They are calling it "a more reasonable approach" than the bill that passed the Senate, calling for an increase to 35 miles per gallon. Why would they endorse such a measure, you ask? Well, perhaps the auto industry is losing some of its sway, or maybe they see the inevitability of the push for more environmental responsibility, and are just trying to blunt the blow instead of fighting the impossible fight. It's a nice thought, sure. Heck, maybe they even watched An Inconvenient Truth and were swayed by Al Gore's eloquence. But call me skeptical: I can't help but think that an environmental bill that's endorsed by those that would lose money on it smells a little funny. Here's to hoping that all works out.

Bush seems to have been blindsided a bit — Bush? Blindsided on foreign policy? ...nah, couldn't be — by his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday. Putin came around with a clever twist on the always-contentious missile defense issue. He had previously been a vocal detractor of the U.S.'s missile defense plans, calling it the start of a new arms race. So when he came yesterday and suggested a missile system in Europe much like the one Bush was calling for, but under explicit governance of the NATO-Russia Council instead of it being a mainly American project, President Bush seemed at a bit of a loss for words. It's hard to argue the common sense of letting missile defense over Europe be managed by Europe, and it felt a bit to me like Bush was looking for reasons not to go along with it. Probably until he could vet the idea with the actual decision-makers in the administration, no doubt.

The Texas Council on Sex Offender Treatment will soon be changing its testing criteria for classifying sex offenders, according to the Houston Chronicle. Apparently, they are expected to replace the current test with a battery of tests designed to better assess and classify the risk of sex offenders. The current system suffers from claims of overpenalizing at the low end and underpenalizing at the high. I can't claim any expertise on this, but I can imagine this is an arduous and thankless task — though it may be an attempt at making the system more just, any changes, especially those that acknowledge that a certain class of offender is overpenalized and hope to fix that, are going to cause friction with those affected by those offenders. I don't envy the Council's job.

To round up the roundup today, we have Mikal Watts getting himself some free press in the form of a writeup in the Dallas Morning News. He got a couple of zingers quoted in there:

"I don't tilt at windmills," he said one day recently as his jet headed to campaign stops in South Texas. "I don't enter races that can't be won."
...
With his experience in the courtroom facing powerful opponents, Mr. Watts says he's prepared for the fight ahead.

"Mikal Watts knows how to counterpunch," he said.

Rep. Rick Noriega also got a quick mention in the article. The common thread here: Cornyn is vulnerable. That is precisely the message we want to be pushing right now.