Wounded, Marine and gay

Posted by Jill Zuckman at 12:54 p.m. CST

In the early-going days of the presidential campaign, the currency of the realm is cash, not votes.

Following the first quarter, the world will know how much each candidate has managed to raise from how many donors. For now, we have to take the candidates’ word for how they’re doing.

Wednesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) demonstrated her fund-raising prowess announcing she had raised over $1 million from nearly 15,000 supporters during a one-week online campaign spurred on by an email from former President Clinton.

Posted by William Neikirk at 11 a.m. CST

Americans think Bill Clinton would be a great First Man if his wife were elected president.

"An asset," a Gallup Panel survey said today. By a better than a two-to-one margin, or 70 to 28 percent, "Americans believe he would be more helpful than harmful to his wife's presidency," Gallup said.

He'd be great giving parties, hosting social events, championing a social issue or cause, representing the White House at foreign weddings and funerals, Americans indicated in the survey.

Posted by Naftali Bendavid at 10:18 a.m. CST

Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor and U.S. homeland security secretary, is joining Sen. John McCain’s presidential effort, with the McCain exploratory committee announcing this morning that Ridge will serve as its “national co-chair.” It’s part of the early scramble by presidential contenders on both sides to sign up their parties’ top fundraisers, power brokers and opinion leaders.

Ridge is an interesting choice, and he has some obvious assets. He was an extremely popular five-term congressman and two-term governor in Pennsylvania, a key political state. Like McCain, he is a decorated Vietnam veteran, having earned the Bronze Star for Valor and other medals. As the nation’s first secretary of homeland security, he helps McCain balance the anti-terrorism credentials of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has been widening his lead over McCain among Republicans in some polls. Giuliani’s campaign is based largely on his performance in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and he has gone to great lengths to associate himself with such “first responders” as police officers and fire fighters.

Posted by Josh Drobnyk at 9:04 a.m CST

Rep. Patrick Murphy returned to Iraq last week for the first time since his days as a paratrooper in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. He said Tuesday that the trip reaffirmed his calls for a phased, 12-month redeployment from the country.

''Being over there confirmed everything and reinforced everything that I believe in my heart is the best thing for our national interest and the interest of that region,'' the 8th District Democrat said from his Capitol Hill office.

Murphy returned Monday from a multi-nation fact-finding mission with five other House members, including fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Carney, a freshman from the 10th District. The weeklong trip also took the group to Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kuwait.

Posted by David Lightman at 8:29 a.m. CST

WASHINGTON -- For years, Puerto Rico's people and its politicians have been split on whether the island should become a state or retain a form of its current commonwealth status.

Although that division still persists in Congress, lawmakers Tuesday agreed on a new, important point:

If and when the people of Puerto Rico vote on the island's status, Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland should vote, too.

That means that places where a large proportion of people from Puerto Rico live, such as Hartford, could become polling sites.

Posted by Mark Silva at 7 am CST

One of the most peculiar artifices of the White House is the "senior administration official.''

This is the official who provides all sorts of background information and insight into the White House's thinking on policies and practices for reporters, but refuses to permit his or her name to be cited.

Such as this "senior administration official,'' who spoke with reporters about Vice President Dick Cheney's intentions with his visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan this week as the vice president was flying out of Kabul on a military transport jet, according to an official White House transcript released:

"Let me just make one editorial comment here. I've seen some press reporting says, 'Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.''

Afghan President Hamid Karzai welcomed Vice President Dick Cheney at the fortified compound of the presidential palace in Kabul this week, following Cheney's overnight stay at Bagram air base, where a suicide bomber's attack on the main gate killed a U.S. soldier and many more. Photo by Silva.

Posted by Christi Parsons at 6:30 a.m. CST

Washington, D.C.--One day a few weeks ago, Gov. Bill Richardson called his elderly mother on the telephone in Mexico City to tell her he was running for president.

“El presidente de que?” she asked, confused. “President of what?”

Posted by William Neikirk at 6:10 a.m. CST

Why do many people take such delight in beating up on Al Gore?

The question is hard to answer. All I know is it seems to be a source of enormous enjoyment for many people. Perhaps it has to do something with the former vice president's wonderfully earnest qualities.

Take the story that the Associated Press spread around the country Tuesday. It seems that a conservative group figured out that Gore's Nashville 10,000-square foot mansion used more than 12 times the amount of electricity than the typical household in the city.

Posted by Mike Dorning at 6:05 am CST.

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton both will be in Selma, Ala., this Sunday, participating in a commemoration of the 1965 Voting Rights march that began there with competing speeches scheduled for the same hour at morning services in neighboring churches.

Their dueling appearances reflect the two campaigns' struggle to win over African-Americans, a formidable constituency within the Democratic party and particularly so in the early primary state of South Carolina.

Though the presidential campaign has barely begun--Obama officially entered less than three weeks ago and the first votes for the party nomination will not be cast for another 10 months--much has been made in recent weeks about early polls showing the former First Lady leading among African-Americans.

Some commentators have suggested that, despite being the most prominent black candidate, Obama may have trouble rallying black voters because his heritage and childhood experience differs from most urban blacks. He is product of a mixed-race marriage between a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya who was mostly raised in Hawaii by his white grandparents.

Well, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests those concerns may be overblown. The poll, as described in a front-page Washington Post article today, shows Obama now leading Clinton among African-Americans and, incidentally, closing the gap among Democrats as a whole.

Posted by William Neikirk at 5 p.m. CST

Now that's what you call a real correction. The Dow-Jones industrial average plunged today by 416.02 points and the Standard & Poor's 500 by 38.20 on a bunch of bad news.

China, the world's hottest economy, decided to tighten industrial lending, setting off a wave of selling around the world. A suicide bombing apparently aimed at Vice President Cheney by the Taliban exploded in Afghanistan. And Alan Greenspan said a recession could be in the cards this year.

That's a witch's brew of negativism. And today it swept over a U.S. stock market that many people feel was probably a bit overpriced these days, perhaps a bit too bullish for its own good.

Posted by Andrew Zajac at 1:22 p.m. CST

Shakespeare earned the undying gratitude of centuries of attorney bashers when he had a character in Henry VI declare, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Of course, the Bard of Avon never met the 110th Congress, or at least the version of the 110th Congress presented by the marketing department at Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw.
If, he had, he might have written: "Hug them, kiss them, and for the love of man, hire them!"

Posted by Mike Dorning at 11:35 am CST, updated at 1:10 pm CST

Spotted, waiting to meet with presidential candidate Barack Obama, at the Illinois senator's office in the Hart Senate Office Building: Bono of the band U2.

Update: Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Obama, said the two met for about a half hour in the senator's personal office to discuss the ONE Campaign, a non-profit organization that the Irish rock star helped form to combat AIDS and global poverty.

"Bono was making rounds on the Hill to build support for the ONE campaign. He particularly wanted to meet with Senator Obama since he’s a member of the Foreign Relations Committee – and has been active on international poverty and global health issues," LaBolt said.

LaBolt said the two did not discuss particular programs or legislation but "had a general discussion about how foreign assistance to the right programs (anti-poverty, global health) can boost our security and the standing of the U.S. around the world."

Guest posted by David Lightman at 8:40 a.m. CST

From today's Hartford Courant

By DAVID LIGHTMAN
Washington Bureau Chief

February 27 2007

WASHINGTON -- Governors meeting in Washington this week put aside partisan differences and gave the White House a clear message: When Connecticut National Guard units are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, our states are often left with not only fewer troops but less equipment for emergencies.

"We're finding that many times, the remaining equipment that is left in our state is not enough to continue to do the exercises that we deem necessary for training," Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, flanked by governors from six other staes, told reporters.

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:44 a.m. CST

MUSCAT, Oman--Vice President Dick Cheney rode an Airstream trailer into Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he rode the Airstream out of Kabul wearing cowboy boots.

He also traveled in the belly of "The Spirit of Strom Thurmond.''

After flying more than halfway around the world in the standard-issue Air Force Two, a military version of the Boeing 757-200 whose electrical system had started acting up someplace between Sydney and Singapore, the vice president boarded a much less identifiable military transport for quick trips in and out of true hot spots: Islamabad, Pakistan, and Bagram Air Base and Kabul in Afghanistan.

This particular C-17, a hulking gray cargo jet out of Charleston, S.C., is dubbed The Spirit of Strom Thurmond, with the name painted decoratively in black above the front passenger door where Cheney boarded.

Inside, the vice president's senior staff--as well as the deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes--sat in airliner-style seats that had been installed in the forward section of the cargo bay.

The C-17 that ferried Cheney from Oman to Pakistan to Afghanistan and back to Oman. Photo by Mark Silva

Posted by Christi Parsons at 6:30 a.m. CST

There will be no shortage of political symbolism in Selma, Ala. on Sunday morning, when Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton speak -- simultaneously and just a few doors away from each other -- at local churches commemorating the 1965 civil rights march in that town.

The senators are rivals for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, and, in the process, for the support of African Americans and progressive white voters who will populate the pews at the two local churches.

But organizers of the annual remembrance of the march across the Edmund Pettus bridge point out a different symbolism to the dueling appearances.

"When we got the right to vote, it liberated African Americans but it also helped, in a symbolic sense, to liberate women," said Tarana Burke, an organizer of the event. "At that time, the people who had power were white men who owned land. Now you have a black man and a woman as leading Democratic candidates for president."

Posted by William Neikirk at 6:15 a.m. CST

It's getting closer.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has narrowed Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a new telephone poll by Zogby International, a polling firm.

And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has increased his lead over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Republican race, the poll says.

Posted by Lisa Anderson at 6:05 a.m. CST

Can't we all just get along?

Post-partisanship was the big message from California's "governator" in his speech to the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Speaking to a sold-out luncheon event that attracted almost as many cameras as an appearance by Sen. Barack Obama these days, Arnold Schwarzenegger was so funny, confident and sensible that people leaving the luncheon could be heard in the elevator wishing he could run for president.

Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Tuesday, February 27, as collected by the Associated Press.

President Bush is meeting with President Elias Antonio Saca Gonzalez of El Salvador at the White House.

9:30 a.m. The Senate Armed Services Committee has a hearing on worlwide threats to national security. Director of National Intelligence John McConnell, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples and Thomas Fingar of the National Intelligence Council are scheduled to testify.
Location: Room 216, Hart Office Building.

Posted by Mark Silva at 11:04 p.m. CST

The vice president spent an unexpected rainy and chilly night inside a reportedly comfortable special VIP container at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, having been snowed and rained in the night before, causing his planned meeting Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to be delayed.

This morning, Tuesday in Afghanistan, Cheney had breakfast with troops in a mess hall in the area of the Koele Barracks – and there is a lot more to follow on that geography.

We were able to stand outside in a covered breezeway of the mess hall, and watch the vice president step out of the mess, fully dressed in suit and tie, and walk through the breezeway toward us speaking with a two-star general, Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, in camouflage-uniform. They walked toward us speaking cheerfully, but the VP did not appear inclined to even recognize us standing there at the end taking pictures and waiting for crumbs, so we asked, how was the mess?

"Breakfast was excellent,'' said Cheney, passing on with a smile, at 7:37 am Bagram base time.

Posted by William Neikirk at 6:01 p.m. CST

Now that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has left office, he is freer to speak his mind about the state of the economy.

And so on Monday, he warned that a recession might be coming in the U.S. by year's end. It sent shudders through financial markets. He's sort of a King Kong when it comes to forecasting.

He said in a satellite hookup to a Hong Kong business conference that the economy has been rising since 2001 and might be in for a fall.

Posted by Andrew Zajac at 4:35 p.m. CST

The chief of staff to convicted former Rep. Robert Ney pleaded
guilty earlier today to honest services fraud, becoming the latest victim of the Jack Abramoff scandal.