Monday Roundup: A Veritable News Quagmire

We have a lot to get into this morning, but we'll open with this: Lady Bird Johnson was laid to rest next to President Lyndon Johnson at their family's ranch on Sunday. Statesman has a nice series on retrospectives, the four days of ceremony, and some stories and remembrances of the former First Lady.

Moving on to some state news: Phil Wilson, our newest Secretary of State, announced plans to put the state's election system through its paces. He would like to know why voter information isn't getting processed and, in short, why the system doesn't work. In November, we'll be voting on a constitutional amendment or two, and as such the systems will need to be working. Problems with the system presented difficulties for several hundred voters during the May elections, and that number will no doubt increase as the elections ramp up in size to 2008.

The Texas Republican Party reports that, for their big straw poll on Labor Day weekend, they will have Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo. So there you go. Get your tickets now.

Some other presidential candidates made the news this weekend as well. Sure, you've heard about how Clinton and Obama both have topped $30 million in the bank for the primary. But what you may not have known was that Bill Richardson was doing a little fundraising of his own, and while he didn't raise $30 million or anything, he did manage to raise $7 million. That will keep the old campaign plane in the air for at least a while, and he will no doubt remind us several more times that he is, in fact, the governor of New Mexico.

Oh, and Gilmore dropped out of the race. And some other people raised some money as well, including Ron Paul, who has reports in that match the hype about his $2.4 million from week before last.

There was even a lot of news on Iraq this weekend. A story in the Los Angeles Times showed that of all foreign nationals causing trouble in Iraq, they are mostly coming from Saudi Arabia. Since we're usually on good terms with them, someone may have to ask the Saudi government what they're doing to prevent it. This is what we call, in international relations, an unfortunate development.

Bush also firmly rejected yet another mutiny from his own party on Iraq, this time from Richard Lugar and John Warner. They represent the moderates among Republicans in the Senate, whom Bush hadn't lost yet. Now that group will more or less desert Bush on his policies.

Later, on the Sunday talk shows, Lindsey Graham and Jim Webb were talking about the current Iraq situation and Webb let Graham have it when he got out of line and started doing the usual GOP Talking Point Shuffle. If it wasn't obvious to you before, you should be able to see clearly that the wheels are off the bus, both on Iraq and the Republican Party.

Finally today, while I'm sure there will be some diplomatic recovery on this one, the Associated Press reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki doesn't care much about the American view of how Iraq is doing, and that US armed forces can feel free to go home "anytime they want." It really does seem to get more weird the more you look at it.