All right, we've got the official accounting about the "36 nations" cited last night by President Bush "who have troops on the ground in Iraq." And it still doesn't add up.

According to a National Security Council official, our tally of 34 was slightly off. We had been including the U.S. as a contributor to MNF-I, and we had forgotten the island nation of Tonga. Additionally, the White House relied on two other nations contributing forces to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq -- Canada and New Zealand -- in addition to the Figians. So there you have it: 26 in MNF-I; seven in the Nato non-combat force; and three guarding UNAMI. Thirty-six!

Only... not. First, Canada withdrew its single soldier to UNAMI in June. (New Zealand does contribute its own soldier -- that's soldier, singular -- to UNAMI, along with, one hopes, bootleg DVDs of Flight of the Conchords.) Second, the aforementioned CRS report (pdf) notes that Tonga has withdrawn its force from Iraq; and, accordingly, MNF-I no longer includes Tonga on its list of coalition members. Additionally, globalsecurity.org isn't sure whether Hungary has anyone in Iraq as part of the Nato force. (No one's answering the phones at the Hungarian embassy in Washington, either.) And, lest we forget, Iceland is sending its press aide -- apparently not really a soldier -- home from Baghdad on October 1.

But assume the White House is correct on Hungary. And also concede that Iceland isn't out yet. Still, by the accounting of the White House, at least two of the nations the president cited last night aren't in Iraq in any capacity anymore.

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I just spoke with Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) spokesman Aaron Saunders who said they are not commenting on the recent testimony from Bill Allen. Saunders said they are standing by the old statement they put out when Stevens' home was raided by the FBI. That statement, declaring that Stevens won't comment on the investigation "until it has concluded," is below.

But during a press conference in July, Stevens wasn't so disciplined, declaring that he'd paid "every bill that was given to us" as part of the home renovation. With Allen's testimony today, that line is looking more and more like the artful dodge it was suspected to be.

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It's getting juicy up in Alaska, as former Veco CEO Bill Allen testified again today. From the AP:

Under cross-examination by defense attorney James Wendt, representing former state Rep. Pete Kott, Allen acknowledged that the more than $400,000 he admitted spending in the bribery charge was for other legislators - and including for work done at the Girdwood, Alaska, home of Stevens, the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate.

"I gave Ted some old furniture," Allen said. "I don't think there was a lot of material, There was some labor."

The workers were VECO employees, probably one to four at a time, Allen said. He said the work on the home lasted for "probably a couple of months." Later, he said it might have been as much as six months.

Maybe Stevens wasn't getting all of his bills, after all?

Update: Bill Allen testified that Veco actually paid for some of the work. Rich Mauer at the Anchorage Daily News reports live from the courtroom:

Wendt: “There wasn’t a lot of material … but you paid some labor bills that went into Sen. Stevens’ house?”

Allen: “Yes.”

Allen said it the labor was from Veco employees.

Update: To clarify, according to Bill Allen's plea deal, he admitted to giving more than $400,000 worth of "illegal benefits" to politicians and their families.

We had come so close to finding 34 of President Bush's 36 countries with troops in Iraq. But now it appears we won't be at 34 for long: next month, Iceland, part of the NATO mission to Iraq, is pulling out its one lone soldier. From the Iceland Review, last week:

Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir has decided to remove an Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU) member from a NATO training program for the Iraqi army in Baghdad next month, causing disappointment among NATO leaders.

The ICRU member has been working in Baghdad for the last two years, primarily as a media representative, and will cease working there October 1, Morgunbladid reports.

(Thx to TPM Reader HT.)

It appears that Thomas Kontogiannis fun in the Grecian sun is over. Kontogiannis, despite having surrendered his passport when he posted bail, was tracked down at a five-star resort in Greece. The judge wasn't happy about it. And now he wants an explanation, Justin reports at the Blotter:

In an order Thursday, Burns wrote he had "received information from reliable sources" that Kontogiannis "has traveled outside the United States" in violation of the terms of his release.

He ordered Kontogiannis to appear at a hearing next Monday to explain why his bond should not be revoked.

About that NATO mission to Iraq: how large is the contribution from member countries? According to a June report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service, it's... less than robust.

The State Department's last weekly Iraq update lists six non-MNF-I NATO countries on the ground (sorta) in Iraq: Slovenia, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Iceland and Portugal. It says there are seven, however, and judging from CRS, State may be forgetting Hungary. (For shame!) If so, that gets us to the magic number of 34 countries on the ground in Iraq. (Alas, GlobalSecurity.org casts doubt on whether the Hungarians made it over there.) We're almost to 36, Mr. President!

So, according to CRS, what are those countries providing to Iraq? Here goes.

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We'd be remiss if we didn't link over to fellow muckraker Charlie Savage's stay at TPMCafe this week to discuss his new book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.

It's long been apparent that the administration has sought to expand executive power whenever possible. But Savage's book documents the extent to which this was a conscious and controlling priority, especially for Dick Cheney -- so much so that Savage calls it "The Cheney Project." Go check it out.

A particularly telling excerpt from the book is below.

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Let's clarify a bit about the Iraq coalition. President Bush last night thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." We count 25 of them (including, um, us) as part of Multinational Force-Iraq, most of whom have a tiny presence "on the ground"; six nations that have a non-MNF-I presence as part of a Nato mission that mostly takes place outside of Iraq; and then brave Fiji, which helps protect the United Nations mission. (Also mostly outside Iraq.)

Multinational Forces-Iraq lists 25 members of the coalition. (We list them after the jump.) Nearly all of them have minuscule numbers of troops devoted to the Iraq mission, for a total of only 11,732 . The most substantial non-U.S. troop contribution, from the UK, pulled back from Basra earlier this month to assume the non-combat "overwatch" role that General Petraeus believes that the U.S. can adopt at some as-yet-undefined point in the (far) future. Others are pulling out: the Danes, proud contributors of 470 troops in Iraq, have said they would withdraw in August, but that seems not to have happened yet. South Korea is expected to get out at the end of the year. Famous ex-members of the Coalition include Singapore, Honduras, the Netherlands, Ukraine and the Philippines, as well as major partners like Spain and Italy.

But wait! Italy and the Netherlands are listed on the State Department's latest weekly Iraq status report (pdf) as being part of the Nato contribution to Iraq. What Nato contribution?

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Today at 3 PM, Alberto Gonzales will speak at his farewell ceremony at the Department of Justice. In addition to the dwindling number of remaining Department officials who haven't resigned, a coterie of law enforcement officials, such as FBI Director Robert Mueller will be there to see him out the door.

The Washington Post reports this morning that Gonzales appears "relieved and happier since announcing his resignation."

As for what he leaves behind:

Almost every senior Justice Department official has resigned or announced plans to depart this year, leaving the department under the control of more than a dozen acting officials. More than a quarter of the nation's U.S. attorneys are also temporary appointees, partly because of the mass firings that eventually had repercussions on Gonzales's tenure.

The mystery is solved! (Again) On the witness stand yesterday Bill Allen identified the "Senator B" in his guilty plea as former State Senator Ben Stevens (R-AK), son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).

Allen pleaded guilty to paying Stevens "consulting fees" in exchange for votes -- and made it clear that he's a briber with a big heart.

As to Stevens, he started consulting for Veco in 1995, six years before he was appointed to the Senate, Allen said. "He was real good at details. He was like Pete [Kott]. He would work," Allen said.

By the time Stevens was in the Senate, he had four kids, Allen noted. "How am I supposed to say 'now that you're a senator, Ben, I can't give you more money,' " Allen testified. "I couldn't do that."

Politicians have mouths to feed too, after all.

It's demeaning that we have to do this. But since President Bush keeps lying about the size of the coalition in Iraq, we have to. Last night, the president thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." To which the Washington Post sighs:

But the State Department's most recent weekly report on Iraq said there are 25 countries supplying 11,685 troops -- about 7 percent of the size of the U.S. forces.

It would be funny if it weren't designed to mislead the American people about the way the international community contributes to the American mission in Iraq. But Bush is right that there are more than 25 countries contributing fighters in Iraq -- you know, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Emirate of Blackwater....

Seriously, the State Department report (pdf, page 31) lists the 25, and then ticks the number up to 33 by adding the U.S., Fiji, and "seven Nato countries" that aren't -- aren't -- a part of Multinational Forces-Iraq: Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey and Slovenia. Yes, you read that right: State says seven but only lists six.

The final three? We've got calls out to the State and Defense Departments, and we'll let you know who our mystery nations are when they tell us.

Norman Hsu, who yesterday was ordered by a Mesa County judge to be held on $5 million cash bail, is calling attention to an old fund-raising technique call "bundling." Bundling became important after the 2002 McCain-Feingold law limited the contributions individuals could make to political parties because bundlers can skirt the law by rounding up contributors and delivering contributions as a "bundle." According to the Times, Hsu enlisted 260 people to give a total of $850,000 to Hillary Clinton for President and delivered hundreds of thousands to other candidates. (Los Angeles Times)

Kim Long, author of The Almanac of Political Corruption, Scandals & Dirty Politics, reminds us that the "good old days" were full of the same political patronage, scandal and sleaze that we find today. His book goes back to colonial times but Long also notes a "close precedent" to the Larry Craig story from 1964 in which Walter Jenkins, LBJ’s chief of staff was caught by undercover officers in a sexual encounter with another man in the basement of the Men’s Room of a YMCA near the White House. Though Jenkins was a close friend of LBJ's, he was dumped within 24 hours because the election was one month away. The history lesson according to Long -- "it makes you wonder about the sensitivity of the public and the media to these types of things." (Harper's)

A report distributed to Congressional offices in March, but not made public until now, reveals that Department of Commerce employees have been indulging in unauthorized, improper first- and business-class travel. ABC News notes that, "Ironically, the inspector general responsible for discovering the improper travel, Johnnie E. Frazier, resigned in June, facing multiple investigations into numerous allegations of abuse and mismanagement, including that he fraudulently charged the government for improper travel." (ABC News)

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An epilogue, of sorts:

Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley, whose e-mails and instant messages to teenage former congressional pages shocked the country, may avoid criminal prosecution in Florida because of the state's three-year statute of limitations.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not start a criminal investigation of Foley until November 2006, making it nearly impossible to prosecute what some officials regarded as the best case, an explicit instant message sent by Foley to a 17-year-old high school student in February 2003, when Foley was in Pensacola, Fla.

Time to move some goalposts. The White House today released its third benchmark report (pdf) on Iraq, and, miracle of miracles, it shows some achievements. Iraq is now making "satisfactory" progress toward de-Baathification reform. Repeat after me, in your best Johnny Drama voice: Victory!

Of course, the Iraqi parliament has been on vacation for all of August, almost half of the time since the White House's last benchmark status update. Needless to say, no law relaxing the purge of overwhelmingly Sunni ex-Baath Party officials has been passed. Just last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office bluntly assessed the de-Baathification benchmark as "not met" in its report. So what gives?

What gives is the White House has seized on an agreement between the different factions of the Iraqi government in August to relax the de-Baathification program as evidence of progress. Now, the salient fact here is that the government of Nouri al-Maliki doesn't contain any Sunnis. One influential Sunni official, Tariq al-Hashemi, signed onto the agreement. But that was largely out of politesse. Not only did his Sunni political bloc not rejoin the government, but one of his deputies dismissed the agreement as "an irrelevant media production."

And that's exactly why it's good enough for President Bush. The report expects the American people to believe that yet another in an endless litany of promises is a sign of the inevitable march of sectarian healing. "The fact that legislation has not yet passed the [parliament] should not diminish the significance of the agreement," the report hectors. But the GAO included the agreement in its assessment, which is far more realistic: "No consensus exists on reforming the current de-Ba'athification policy, and many Iraqis are concerned about the prospect of former Ba'athists returning to power."

And there lies the new way forward for the Iraq war: to paraphrase Senator George Aiken of Vermont, declare victory and stay in forever.

I don't have half the brainpower necessary for economics reporting, but luckily, the Media Consortium's Brian Beutler does. Beutler examines the statistics cited by Amb. Ryan Crocker during his testimony this week, and finds that -- somehow! -- they don't really add up to the success story that Crocker related:

Perhaps Crocker's single biggest claim during his two days on Capitol Hill was this: "The IMF estimates that economic growth will exceed 6 percent for 2007." It's a true statement as far as it goes, but the International Monetary Fund's Executive Board reported the figure with less enthusiasm. "Economic growth has been slower than expected," the IMF fretted, "mainly because the expected expansion of oil production has not materialized."

Indeed, it's typical for a country as damaged as Iraq to see its economy fluctuate wildly, resulting in spurts of growth much more substantial than 6 percent.

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The going suspicion in Washington has always been that politicians are not prone to ask too many questions of contributors as long as the checks keep coming. But never has a contributor's hidden past blown up in a campaign's face quite like it has for the Clinton campaign in the case of Norman Hsu.

The story began just two weeks ago when The Wall Street Journal noticed that one of Hillary Clinton's biggest donors was a family that lived in a single story home near the San Francisco airport. The father, William Paw, was a mail carrier; his wife was a homemaker. And yet the couple and their children had given $45,000 to Clinton since 2005. The contributions closely, and suspiciously, matched the timing of those by a New York businessman named Norman Hsu. It's illegal to reimburse individuals for making campaign contributions.

The next day, The Los Angeles Times made the story a scandal when it reported that Hsu had been convicted in California state court of stealing $1 million from investors in the early 90s. He'd failed to show at a sentencing hearing and been on the lam ever since.

After that story, he made his way back to California, but then promptly disappeared again after posting $2 million for bail. After sending out a "To Whom It May Concern" suicide note via FedEx to acquaintances and charitable organizations to whom he'd donated (like, ironically enough, The Innocence Project), he hopped on an Amtrak train to Chicago. On the train, he locked locked himself in a compartment. A passenger discovered him the following morning shirtless, wedged against the door in the fetal position. Pills were scattered over the floor. He was arrested after being transferred to a hospital in Colorado.

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Gen. Petraeus downplayed the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in his testimony and subsequent press appearances. But a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service last week pointed out that al-Qaeda in Iraq is a miniscule fraction of the insurgency. From Kenneth Katzman, the lead Iraq analyst for Congress' independent, nonpartisan research wing, AQI is:

A numerically small but politically significant component is non-Iraqi, mostly in a faction called al-Qaeda Iraq. Increasingly in 2007, U.S. commanders have seemed to equate AQI with the insurgency, even though most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents.

Katzman puts AQI's active strength at between 1500 and 3500 fighters. (Terrorism expert Malcolm Nance pegs it at about 1300.) That's compared to about 25,000 Sunni insurgents, according to U.S. estimates, though the Iraqi government puts them at about 40,000, with 150,000 "supporters." AQI certainly punches above its weight class -- Petraeus said it's responsible for today's murder of anti-AQI Sunni shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, though George Washington University professor Marc Lynch thinks Sunni insurgents may have killed him -- but it's important to remember that the insurgency isn't a monolith under the control of al-Qaeda.

It just goes to show: Lee County, Florida was asking for trouble when it decided to rebuff Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) pork. Now if they're hit by a hurricane and need help and can't get it, they'll only have themselves to blame.

The Department of Transportation warned Lee County, Florida in a letter last week that it has jeopardized receiving emergency funds by voting to return the extra-Constitutional $10 million earmark Rep. Don Young (R-AK) slipped them in 2005.

DOT wrote the county ominously saying:

Since Florida is in the middle of hurricane season, this action could jeopardize potential funding from the Emergency Relief Program, which provides for the repair and reconstruction of Federal-aid highways and roads on Federal lands which have suffered serious damage as a result of (1) natural disasters or (2) catastrophic failures from an external cause.

In order to ensure such funding, the DOT wants the county to revise the process by which it rejected Young's $10 million.

This won't help Adm. Mike McConnell's flagging credibility on Capitol Hill. On Monday, in response to questioning from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), McConnell, the director of national intelligence, proudly claimed a victory for the new Protect America Act -- the broad new surveillance law McConnell helped push through Congress last month that revised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. McConnell claimed that three German terrorism suspects arrested last week for plotting to blow up nightclubs frequented by U.S. military personnel had come to the attention of German authorities thanks to U.S. intercepts made possible by the new law.

Only one problem: it had been widely reported that the suspects had been under surveillance for months. The Protect America Act wasn't even a month old at the time of their arrest. Almost immediately, intelligence officials queried by Newsweek's Mike Isikoff and Mark Hosenball backtracked on McConnell's dubious statement.

Yesterday, bowing to pressure, McConnell released this statement retracting his claim:

During the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on September 10, 2007, I discussed the critical importance to our national security of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the recent amendments to FISA made by the Protect America Act. The Protect America Act was urgently needed by our intelligence professionals to close critical gaps in our capabilities and permit them to more readily follow terrorist threats, such as the plot uncovered in Germany. However, information contributing to the recent arrests was not collected under authorities provided by the Protect America Act.

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John Rizzo, President Bush's choice for the CIA general counsel, has gotten opposition for standing by a 2002 memo that defined torture as pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of body function, or even death." Now the Senate intelligence committee has requested that Rizzo's name be withdrawn for the nomination.

The day after Norman Hsu turned himself in to California authorities he penned a suicide note that he sent to several acquaintances and charitable organizations. The note apologized for putting people "through inconvenience or trouble." This afternoon he faces a Mesa County judge. (WSJ)

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has been forced to withdraw his assertion that a new electronic surveillance law was instrumental in the recent uncovering of a terror plot in Germany. However, four intelligence-community officials, who came forward anonymously to refute McConnell, insisted that the new law played little if any role in the unraveling of the German plot. Instead, the U.S. military should have been credited for the surveillance work they completed months before the new law was enacted. (Newsweek)

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Former Veco CEO Bill Allen testified in the criminal prosecution of state Rep. Pete Kott (R-AK) yesterday, in yet another example of how he likes to keep pols on the hook:

"... Allen talked about overpaying a flooring job done by Kott by more than $7,000 and of scheming to get at least some of that money to Kott's son so that he could work on Kott's 2006 campaign, when a poll showed he was in surprising trouble. Even the poll itself was secretly paid for by Veco, which if true would be a hidden -- and illegal -- campaign contribution by the company to Kott."

Allen also testified that Kott joked about wanting a job handing out towels to women on beaches in Barbados, but that he had genuinely planned to give Kott a job as a Veco lobbyist, which pays $6,000 to $12,000 a month.

One week later, here it is: Gen. Petraeus' definition of sectarian violence.

Ever since the GAO report last week said it was "not clear" that the surge had contributed to a drop in sectarian deaths, Gen. Petraeus has been under pressure to explain his methodology. The GAO was agnostic on whether or not sectarian attacks had declined in recent months, citing that it required knowing a perpetrator's intent -- a task beyond the capabilities of the agency. But GAO was, at least inferentially, skeptical, noting that the broader pattern of attacks on civilians -- of which sectarianism is a proportion -- hasn't declined. And further reporting suggested problems with how MNF-I has tabulated sectarian casualties: one famous Washington Post story cited a senior intelligence official claiming MNF-I looks at where a bullet entered someone's head to divine sectarian intent.

Petraeus has disputed all of this. Yesterday, in Washington, Petraeus took a stab at an explanation. And in Baghdad, the Los Angeles Times reports, so did the U.S. military command, known as Multinational Forces Iraq, to combat the accusation that it's cooking the books to exaggerate the success of the surge. However, it's not exactly clear what that methodology tells us:

Stung by accusations that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, had presented selective statistics during his testimony before Congress, the military released a statement here outlining its definition of sectarian violence: bombings, killings or other attacks committed by an ethnic group or religious sect against another, for purely sectarian purposes.

That seems a little circular. As I wrote last week, determining sectarian killings isn't a matter of determining intent. There's plenty of evidence from a body that a killing was driven by sectarian motivations. Victims of sectarianism "generally are males found without identification documents and shot execution-style. The bodies usually are blindfolded and bound at the wrists, and often bear signs of torture," writes the LAT's Tina Susman. It may be that MNF-I's methodology makes sense, and the GAO was unduly harsh. Or not.

Here's MNF-I's statement in full:

Multi-National Force-Iraq defines ethno-sectarian murder as a murder committed by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.

Ethno-sectarian violence is defined as an event and any associated civilian deaths caused by or during murders/executions, kidnappings, direct fire, indirect fire, and all types of explosive devices identified as being conducted by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.

In our collection of data, a shot to the front or back of the head is not used to determine ethno-sectarian murder.

The number of ethno-sectarian murders has declined significantly since the height of the sectarian violence in December 2006. Iraq-wide, the number of ethno-sectarian deaths has decreased by over 55 percent, and it would have decreased much further if it not for the casualties inflicted by barbaric al-Qaeda bombings attempting to reignite sectarian violence.

It remains unclear why, as reported, the GAO, DIA and CIA have difficulty accepting MNF-I's definition of sectarian violence.

How much opposition would Ted Olson get if nominated? Well, consider the gauntlet thrown down:

Senate Democrats will block Ted Olson from succeeding Alberto Gonzales as attorney general if President Bush nominates him, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.

"Ted Olson will not be confirmed," Reid, D-Nev., said in a written statement. "I intend to do everything I can to prevent him from being confirmed as the next attorney general."

Surely this counts as a new land speed record for dropping something down the memory hole.

Tomorrow, President Bush will endorse the Petraeus plan for removing five Army surge brigades by July 2008. He's going to portray that incremental reduction as the spoils of victory. Just yesterday, however, Gen. Petraeus conceded that "the string is going to run out" on the deployments of the surge brigades by the summer, and since the active-duty Army doesn't have any more available brigades to send in relief and the reserve component (the National Guard and Army Reserve) is overtaxed as well, the surge just has to come to an end -- unless the Pentagon is willing to extend active-duty deployments even further, which Secretary Gates pledged in April not to do.

Just don't tell any of that to Tony Snow. "Wrong. You don't have to pull 'em out," Snow said today at the daily press briefing when challenged by a reporter.

Snow tried to portray the reporter's inquiry as an attack on Petraeus' credibility, even though Petraeus himself acknowledged the fact yesterday.

On at least three occasions that I counted during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, Gen. Petraeus flatly stated that the U.S. is not providing weapons to the Sunni tribal fighters who, over the past year, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. On Monday I noted how the U.S. was giving the tribes money that they used to buy weapons, making Petraeus' assurance precious and legalistic.

But it turns out that earlier this year, U.S. commanders weren't so defensive about the terms of their deal with the tribes. Here's Major General Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, on those terms in June:

[Question] (on camera): Will the assistance or the coordination with these former insurgent groups extend to arming [them] or helping them out in logistics in any sense?

GEN. BENJAMIN MIXON, U.S. REGIONAL COMMANDER IN IRAQ: It certainly will. We have seen this in counterinsurgency operations before, using local nationals, if you will, arming them, forming them into scouts, if you will. And that's the primary role that we want to use them in. They know the territory, they know the enemy.

Did Mixon misspeak?

Last month, Freedom's Watch, a conservative group dedicated to urging public support for the Iraq War and the president's surge, began its campaign of TV, radio and Web ads. But the $15 million, five-week blitz was just the beginning to a campaign that's seemingly as open-ended as the Iraq War itself. And that's thanks largely to the financial support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson, reports the National Journal's Peter Stone (not online).

"Sources say that the group has lined up commitments of almost $200 million (from Adelson and others) to finance its operations," he reports, noting that "the group has several A-list donors," but "Adelson by far has the most firepower."

Forbes recently listed Adelson as the sixth richest person in the world, with $26.5 billion in assets. He's made his fortune mainly off of hotel-casinos and owns the Las Vegas Sands company. Stone reports that Adelson doesn't serve on Freedom's Watch's board of directors, but "the group’s chairman is Bill Weidner, president of the Las Vegas Sands."

Also on that board of directors, of course, are Ari Fleischer, and Brad Blakeman, both veterans of the Bush White House (spokesman and scheduler, respectively), who've served as the public faces of the group.

Gen. Petraeus didn't say that there isn't a non--al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency in Iraq anymore. But he's certainly been at pains to diminish its role. That might have to do with both his campaign plan against that very insurgency -- and a great deal with politics -- but it certainly paints a misleading picture to the public about who it is we're fighting in Iraq.

Today at the Press Club, he very briefly referred to the Sunni insurgency, urging reporters, "don't get me wrong" about its existence. But it would be very easy to get the general wrong, since his description of the ongoing Iraqi Sunni insurgency against the U.S. consigned it to an afterthought compared to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Shiite militias.

But it's the Sunni insurgency, primarily, that's responsible for the approximately 93 soldiers killed on average in Iraq each month this year. "It's not Al Qaeda in Iraq -- they are strictly a [car bomb] and occasional ambush group," says Malcolm Nance, a longtime counterterrorism expert and former adviser to the U.S. military in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "Nope, it's the ex-Ba'athists and Iraqi religious extremists."

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It's all over but the arguing. In a few days, Gen. Petraeus will be back at Camp Victory and Amb. Crocker will be back in the Green Zone. The next comprehensive official assessment of Iraq's political and military fortunes will come in March 2008, when Petraeus will decide when and if to schedule further reductions below the pre-surge force of roughly 130,000 troops.

But, until then, what information are we still missing, despite the last two days' worth of testimony? Here are a few of what Donald Rumsfeld used to call the "known unknowns."

Stastical Methodology. Forgive us for harping on this point, but at least twice yesterday, Senators noted to Petraeus that his figures for determining the status of security in Iraq are under question, only to decline to pursue any answers. By some estimates, Iraq in 2007 is more deadly for civilians than Iraq in 2006. Similarly, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, following on concerns from both the CIA and the DIA, said last week that it can't determine that sectarian killings are in fact on the decline. Petraeus referred today to his command's "pretty logical and rational" methdology, and said on Monday that the tabulation has remained consistent since before he took over the command. But though he hinted at it today, he didn't discuss how his command tabulates sectarian killings; whether his command relies on the Iraqi government for its total of civilian casualties; or if they revise its total of "insurgent" deaths after an engagement when eyewitnesses claim civilians were killed.

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Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) is well connected in the state's scandal circuit. He came up twice yesterday in two separate Alaska cases, one criminal and one civil, that both hinge on the financial ties between public officials and company leaders.

In the favors-for-votes corruption trial of former state legislator Pete Kott (who dreams of a topless beaches and a Barbados prison gig), the FBI played a videotape of a secret meeting between Veco executives discussing Stevens' arrival, just in time to support legislation they wanted pushed through the state legislature.

In the grainy video, VECO Corp. executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith can be heard talking about how to ensure passage of an oil tax bill. If approved, the bill would increase chances that a natural gas pipeline would be built, a deal that could mean huge profits for VECO.

Allen and Smith said they wanted to ensure Stevens was asked "good questions" that would steer him toward discussing the bill and the pipeline. The senator, Allen said, would make clear that "we need oil."

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Neil Volz, ex-Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) former chief of staff, and one of Jack Abramoff's partners in crime was richly rewarded for his ample cooperation with investigators today. Judge Ellen Huvelle sentenced him to two years probation and $2,000.

Prosecutors had suggested no jail time for Volz since he'd been such a helpful cooperator in putting away Ney and offering muck on other lawmakers. The judge went along with that, saying that "The government has clearly viewed you as the key to their case against Congressman Ney."

Ney's other former aide who cooperated against him, Will Heaton, also got off with no jail time.

Update: More from the AP here.

Now we're getting somewhere. At the National Press Club this morning, Gen. Petraeus for the first time peeled back the curtain behind his questioned methodology for tabulating ethno-sectarian violence. Calling his methodology "pretty logical and rational," the general said he has a "three-page document" -- he read from it at his Press Club podium -- that refutes a senior intelligence official who told Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post that Multi-National Force--Iraq doesn't count front-of-the-head executions as sectarian incidents. "It's just not true," Petraeus said. So what is a sectarian murder?

"Civilians who show signs of being blindfolded, tortured or being shot anywhere, and so forth."

No word on how MNF-I tabulates civilian casualties. (Does it use Iraqi government data? Morgue data?) Also no word on why two of the larger U.S. intelligence agencies, with the largest analytic capability in the intelligence community, reportedly take issue with MNF-I's stats. So we'll be filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the methodology document today.

The administration rolled out its new disaster recovery plan this week, and the states aren't happy about it. Despite drafting the new system for two years, they allege, the government has still left unclear any chain of command during a disaster, and the plan gives no substantive detail for guiding officials through different types of disaster. The government fired back saying that the final plan would be a "collaborative process": the states have 30 days to digest the plan and come up with improvements. (Washington Post)

Hsu- you're freaking me out, dude. An investor with Norman Hsu is complaining that the money he gave to the investment company of the fundraiser-turned-best-story-ever is now missing. The investor? Joel Rosenman, one the original creators of Woodstock. (Wall Street Journal)

Hillary Clinton has long told her staff that the biggest threat to her presidential campaign would be to accept questionable funds, which would link her, in the minds of voters, to Democratic scandals from her husband's tenure. Whoops. (NY Times)

On the plus side, presidential candidates are buckling down on campaign contributions, with both Edwards and Clinton performing criminal background checks on all donors. (LA Times)

The Justice Department has announced that it will not prosecute executives of Chiquita Banana for paying bribes to Columbian paramilitaries that are designated as terrorists by the U.S. government. I guess preventing the funding of terrorists is not on the list of DOJ priorities. Although it always helps when your college roommate was Michael Chertoff. (Washington Post)

Apparently Senator Vitter (R-LA) has been mixing business and pleasure more than we knew. A former New Orleans prostitute has come forward to declare that she had a “pure sex relationship” with the Senator. He “would come in and do his business” and “I want the truth to be known.” (Associated Press)

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The field for Alberto Gonzales' replacement has narrowed to two, with Ted Olson remaining the front runner, The New York Times reports this morning. Olson in unequivocally not the nonpartisan pick Democrats had urged President Bush to make.

As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) puts it to the Times:

“Clearly if you made a list of consensus nominees, Olson wouldn’t appear on that list.... My hope is that the White House would seek some kind of candidate who would be broadly acceptable.”

How staunch of an opposition to Olson's candidacy Democrats would offer is an open question. The Times reports that the administration is betting that Democrats "will pay a political price if they try to block confirmation of a new attorney general. The thinking inside the White House is that Democrats cannot call for new leadership at the Justice Department, then block it."

The case against Olson is considerable. The chief issue driving opposition to Olson's nomination as solicitor general back in 2001 (he very narrowly passed, 51-47) was his role in the so-called Arkansas Project, the well-funded and unscrupulous effort to unseat the Clintons via scandal. Olson sat on the board of directors for The American Spectator, the organ for the effort, but when he was questioned about his role, he downplayed it, leading to accusations that he'd lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee. So you have a confirmed partisan (don't forget his role as representing the administration in Bush v. Gore) who was less than candid in testimony to Congress. Hardly much of an improvement from Gonzales.

But there are some mitigating factors. Olson lost his third wife, Barbara Olson (author of a screed against Hillary Clinton) on 9/11. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the administration could thus gain "an emotional political advantage," with Olson's nomination.

More considerable is Olson's role in the administration as solicitor general. James Comey testified to Congress, for instance, that he'd sought out Olson to serve as a kind of backup for him after the infamous Ashcroft/Gonzales hospital showdown in March, 2004. Because Olson is someone that Comey "respects enormously," as Comey testified, he asked Olson to accompany him to his late-night meeting with Andrew Card in the White House to serve as a witness. Olson's role in that showdown -- he backed Comey in the dispute -- might serve to temper Democrats' view of his past.

On the other hand, the position of solicitor general is much different from that of attorney general. And Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) opposed Olson's nomination as solicitor general back in 2001 because he was unconvinced that Olson's "sharp partisanship over the last several years might not be something that he could leave behind." That doesn't sound like a person who could fix the Justice Department.

Olson isn't the only nominee in the running. George Terwilliger, George H.W. Bush's former deputy attorney general, is still in it. Though the Times reports that Leahy is "cool" to that option and that Terwilliger "may also be criticized for partisanship, given his association with conservatives who have embraced the administration’s expansion of executive powers during wartime."

The Times reports that the other three names floated in the past week have all bowed out. So it seems fair to conclude that this is not a nomination that will go smoothly.

Finishing up, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) asked what's standing in the way of continued contracting fraud in Iraq. Neither Gen. Petraeus nor Amb. Crocker had much in the way of a detailed answer, but both singled out the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, as a key bulwark against waste, fraud and abuse.

Given that Petraeus wants to speed up weapons purchases by Iraq under the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales programs, maybe those safeguards should be looked at in greater detail.

Gen. Petraeus ranked the enemies the U.S. is fighting in Iraq at the behest of Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), and there was a notable absence: the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency. All of a sudden, practically every Sunni anti-U.S. fighter is now defined as al-Qaeda.

Petraeus listed al-Qaeda as "the wolf closest to the shed," followed by Shiite militias, who are the cause of much of the "ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad." After that came the "non-kinetic" enemies, such as getting the "institutional structures" established for the Iraqi government, problems with training the Iraqi security forces, corruption and so forth. As he was finishing his list, Petraeus then realized he had forgotten someone: "There are certainly still some Sunni insurgents out there."

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is, at most, 15 percent of the Sunni insurgency. One expert, Malcolm Nance, who's worked with the U.S. military and intelligence in Iraq, puts AQI at two to five percent of the Sunni insurgency. It's good news that several insurgent groups, like the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and toward us. The August National Intelligence Estimate is silent on the Sunni insurgency, but certainly doesn't say it has been marginalized.

That shouldn't be surprising: the recent ABC/BBC/NHK poll found that 93 percent of Sunnis believe that attacks on the U.S. are justified. What's more, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical powerhouse, recently issued a communique to the entire, fractious Sunni "resistance." If there's only a rump Sunni insurgency, someone forgot to tell the AMS.

Petraeus has repeatedly referred to himself as a "realist" over the past two days. But suggesting the Sunni insurgency is diminished to the point of marginality after the anti-al-Qaeda shift is, at best, wishful thinking.

Good question from Sen. John Thune (R-SD) to Gen. Petraeus. If the Iraqi security forces are ready to take over responsibility for Iraq before sectarian reconciliation has occurred -- not an unlikely scenario, given the dismal prospects for political progress, Crocker notwithstanding -- is the U.S. mission, you know, accomplished? Petraeus' answer: not necessarily. If the government was set to collapse, the U.S. might stay in Iraq to prop it up, even if the Iraqi Army and police are able to control the country. That's quite an extraordinary statement. Petraeus probably means to avoid limiting his options, but it's never before been suggested by anyone in uniform that we would stay in Iraq to support an Iraqi government after the Iraqi military has Stood Up.

With the largest U.S. presence in Iraq of the entire war, Baghdad is still being ethnically cleansed, and at least 1000 Iraqis (a very conservative estimate) are dying every month. Petraeus and Crocker didn't get any questions about Iraq in this context. Instead, senators have asked about a prospective humanitarian catastrophe in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal.

There's no doubt that's a legitimate question, since any withdrawal scenario has to contemplate disaster, not just for U.S. forces but for Iraqis. Here Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asks Crocker if post-occupation Iraq will be worse than the genocide in Darfur. Crocker doesn't quite endorse the statement, but says "the prospects for a truly catastrophic humanitarian disaster could be considerable." And indeed, it could be, and the country needs to debate that. Yet part of that debate should be the fact that sectarian cleansing is happening in Iraq right now, despite the best efforts of the largest U.S. force in Iraq since the invasion.

Given half the opportunity by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Gen. Petraeus eagerly backtracked on his earlier admission to Sen. Warner that he didn't know if success in Iraq would make America safer.

It's the American dream to retire to a job as a prison warden near topless beaches in Barbados. Well, at least, that was former state Rep. Pete Kott's (R-AK) dream, and Veco CEO Bill Allen was going to do his best to make it happen -- in exchange for a lucrative oil pipeline, of course.

In opening statements in Kott's public corruption trial, the prosecution played the jury phone conversations recorded by the FBI where Kott jokes (at least once while audibly tipsy) about his hopes for the prison position, but is serious about a future with Veco after leaving his post.

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For an excellent illustration of the difference in candor between Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker that's emerged during these three hearings, take a look at this exchange with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Collins asked how much longer Americans could be expected to expend blood and treasure on a war without evident Iraqi political progress.

Petraeus responded that "if we arrive at that point a year from now, it's something I'll have to think very, very, very hard about," since America has "real national interests at stake." Even if you disagree with Petraeus' assessment, it's a fair point, and he didn't duck a hypothetical, which he easily could have done.

Crocker, by contrast, simply repeated his claim that the "trajectory" of political progress is "upward," thereby waving away the concern. "I can't say what I'll be saying in a year, or even six months from now, but I can tell you that I'll make the same objective and honest assessment I tried to do for this testimony."

Petraeus has been slippery in his own way during these hearings (see here and here for examples), but Crocker's statement that Iraqi politics is on the right course certainly doesn't instill confidence in his objectivity.

So much for "conditions." Under questioning from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Gen. Petraeus conceded that his timetable for ending the surge by July 2008 is due to the five extra active-duty Brigade Combat Teams coming to the end of their scheduled deployments and the lack of available units to keep U.S. troop strength at 162,000.

Remember this when President Bush on Thursday unveils his (read: Petraeus') "drawdown" plan -- and, for that matter, any time a politician says that the only "responsible" reduction of forces is one that's "conditions-based."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) doesn't think Gen. Petraeus has enough war on his hands. The senator (changing the subject from Iraq with "I want to go to Iran...") asked Petraeus if he wanted "the authority" from Congress to "pursue the Qods forces into Iranian territory." Petraeus, for some reason, politely declined to start a third contemporaneous U.S. war.

Once again, Gen. Petraeus was asked about how long it will take to draw down to his strategy's envisioned end state of five U.S. brigades on an "overwatch" mission. And once again he dodged, saying when the reductions need to take place will have to wait until "we get closer each of those times."

In the hearings' most stunning moment so far, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) asked Gen. Petraeus if success in the Iraq war will make America safer. His response -- by far the most surprising moment of the hearings -- was a blunt "I don't know." This is the first time that any general officer, let alone the commanding general in Iraq, has ever equivocated on whether success in Iraq will contribute to U.S. security.

By contrast, President Bush describes a victory in Iraq as an epochal achievement for America and a potentially decisive blow to terrorism. For instance: "[The terrorists] know that the success of a free Iraq, who can be a key ally in the war on terror and a symbol of success for others, will be a crushing blow to their strategy to dominate the region, and threaten America and the free world."

Video of the exchange to come shortly.

Update: Here's the video.

Months ago, Amb. Crocker told Joe Klein of Time magazine that "The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing." Or did he? Asked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) if that was an accurate quote, Crocker equivocated repeatedly before finally saying "I do not recall saying that."

What does Klein think about Crocker's memory?

Update: Here's Klein's response: "He said it. I've got it in my notes. He never denied it or asked for a correction after it appeared in print and was featured on Meet the Press. He may not remember it, but he said it."

National coverage of the Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) controversy has centered on Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson's affidavit, but today The New York Times raises questions about another aspect of the case: the independence of prosecutor Lois V. Franklin.

Franklin took over the case after US attorney Leura Canary recused herself because of her husband's ties to the Republican Party and Karl Rove. Franklin has claimed a startling degree of independence from the Department of Justice and Canary.

The New York Times points to some unresolved issues there:

Yet questions about the Siegelman case persist, including about whether Mr. Franklin played the decisive role he says he did, and not just among the former governor’s supporters.

For one thing, the prosecution of a high official like a governor is nearly always undertaken under the watchful eye of Justice Department officials in Washington, former government lawyers say.

One of Mr. Siegelman’s former lawyers, G. Douglas Jones, former United States attorney in Birmingham, says that at a crucial moment in 2004, when the Siegelman investigation seemed to be flagging, he was told by government prosecutors in Montgomery that the “folks in Washington said, ‘Take another look at everything.’ ”

Referring to a unit of the Justice Department, Mr. Jones said, “There is no question but that the Public Integrity Section was intimately involved.”

Something that's passed without notice in the hearings today and yesterday is that Gen. Petraeus cheered Iraq "becoming one of the U.S.'s larger foreign military sales customers." According to the general, Iraq has committed $1.6 billion already to the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales program, and might commit another $1.8 billion before the end of the year. A few minutes ago, he told Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that "we have to push the [foreign military sales] system" to get more weapons into Iraqi hands.

This is a pattern with Petraeus. When he commanded the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, almost 200,000 pistols and AK-47s intended for the Iraqi security forces went missing. Petraeus forthrightly said recently that he didn't think having safeguards in place to ensure the weapons were in the proper hands was as important as simply getting a slow-moving Pentagon bureaucracy to ship the weapons to Iraq. That decision, however, was one of several that has occasioned an unprecedented Pentagon Inspector General mission to Iraq to determine the extent of mismanagement and corruption -- and possibly even criminal activity -- in the sprawling logistics system.

Now, Petraeus seems to be saying that the Iraqi security forces need a surge of U.S. weaponry. It's admirable that Petraeus is trying to rapidly increase the competence and capability of the Iraqi security forces -- the lack of which makes up a large part of bipartisan criticism of the war. But what safeguards does Petraeus have in place to ensure that those guns won't end up on the black market, or in the hands of U.S. enemies?

Perhaps the most difficult question for Iraq, no matter where you stand on withdrawal, is what happens after the U.S. leaves. Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) asked Amb. Crocker what confidence he had that the Anbar tribal shift against al-Qaeda could take hold in the absence of the U.S., and Crocker answered that the Iraqi government is investing billions in infrastructure development, including in Anbar. Fine, Sununu asked; but what will ensure that the Iraqi government will spend that money?

Crocker's answer: "There are a number of mechanisms Iraq has in place," including inspectors general in the ministries and the Commission on Public Integrity, to guard against corruption. Are they at all competent? "To a degree," Crocker said.

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Is it more important to fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan or al-Qaeda in Iraq? was Sen. Russ Feingold's (D-WI) question.

It was a fair one for Amb. Crocker, who came to Iraq after serving for nearly two years as ambassador to Pakistan. Crocker, anticipating where Feingold was clearly going with this, diplomatically answered, "I did not feel as Ambassador to Pakistan that the focus, the resources and the people needed to deal with that situation weren't available or weren't there because of Iraq." And yet, the July National Intelligence Estimate found that al-Qaeda Senior Leadership, as it's called, has reestablished a "safehaven" in the tribal areas of Pakistan. So Crocker didn't exactly "deal with that situation" satisfactorily. When Feingold pressed again for an answer, Crocker gave another diplomatic version: "In my view, fighting al-Qaeda is what's important, whatever front they're on."

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) then turned to General Petraeus. Petraeus' job isn't to fight, or to plan, the entire war; as he said to Feingold, it's a question better directed to Admiral Fallon, the Central Command chief, not to mention President Bush, Defense Secretary Gates, or Director of National Intelligence McConnell.

Feingold called the unwillingness to "seriously comment about how this relates to the larger global fight against terrorism" a "classic example of myopia, the myopia of Iraq."

Finally, the question on everyone's mind. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) asked how the turn of Anbar Sunnis against al-Qaeda relates to national reconciliation -- what Amb. Crocker and President Bush have endlessly called "bottom-up" reconciliation. Of course, there aren't any Shiites in Anbar, so how does that reconciliation work?

Both Crocker and Gen. Petraeus answered the same way: reconciliation can be perceived by the Maliki government's willingness to pay for Anbar "volunteers" to join the Iraqi security forces. What that really means is that the Interior Ministry is paying the salaries of 27,000 Anbari Sunnis to police their province. But Crocker said that, at least, the financing shows that the "two entities" -- Anbar province and the Maliki government -- are "establishing working linkages." Petraeus added that in Baghdad -- not really the area at issue in the substance of the question, but still -- the "volunteers" in Sunni neighborhoods against al-Qaeda are going to be allowed by the Maliki government to no longer be "fixed in place" for operations. That means that the ministries of defense and interior will send the Sunnis newly in their ranks to areas outside their own neighborhoods.

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Way back in July, the House Judiciary Committee voted to find White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a committee subpoena relating to the U.S. attorney firings investigation.

Today, John Bresnahan over at the Politico reports that the Democratic leadership is unlikely to push for a full vote in the House until late September at the earliest. The reason, he reports, is that Democrats haven't yet "briefed lawmakers on what it would mean and how the controversy would play out, both legally and politically":

“I don’t think anything is going to happen on that for a while,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). “When you decide to do that, you have to make your best case. You want everyone to understand what’s happening and why.”

Emanuel said Pelosi and other top Democrats have not begun those consultations yet — and he was unsure when they would.

Conyers said it was critical for Congress to enforce its subpoenas against executive branch officials, including senior White House aides.

“Otherwise, we just become a [social] club,” Conyers said, adding that he would be reviewing the issue with Pelosi soon.

Gen. Petraeus made much of the Marine Expeditionary Unit that he's sending home later this month. After an interjection by Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), the general clarified that the 2,000 Marines were schedule to come home anyway. The key, he said, is that he hasn't recommended that another unit relieve the Marines.

The Justice Department doesn't think much of Dana Jill Simpson's affidavit implicating Karl Rove in the decision to prosecute former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL), according to a letter Paul discussed yesterday. In the letter, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski took a number of swipes at Simpson's credibility.

Simpson, an Alabama native and Republican lawyer, signed a sworn statement this spring saying she was part of a Gov. Bob Riley (R-AL) campaign conference call in 2002 discussing how to get Siegelman to concede the close election. Simpson said that one caller, Bill Canary, offered that his "girls would take care of him" -- referring to his wife Leura Canary, a US attorney in Alabama, and her friend, another US attorney in the state. Canary also assured the group that he and Rove had previously discussed Siegelman and that Rove made sure the DoJ was pursuing the former governor.

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Echoing Amb. Crocker's "bottom-up" picture, Gen. Petraeus told presidential hopeful Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) that what gives him reason to believe reconciliation is on the way is that reconciliation efforts on the ground are outpacing the "big law" in Baghdad. There may be no amnesty law for ex-insurgents, for instance, but amnesty is the right word for "former insurgents in Abu Ghraib next to a Sunni-Shiite fault line being allowed to attend a police academy."

And yet in 2006, Prime Minister Maliki established a reconciliation program that didn't go anywhere. There were a number of reconciliation conferences in 2005 as well. If Petraeus and Crocker are ready to say that centrally-directed efforts at reconciliation are irrelevant, they should say it outright, so the administration, Congress and the Iraqis can debate the point. But to suggest that local steps will lead to the end of the intractability is a tall order, belied by the last two years of history.

Sen. Biden proclaimed himself uninterested in the methodological dispute between Petraeus' command and the GAO. But when Petraeus reaffirmed that the last five weeks of positive data collection on civilian casualties would have changed the GAO's skeptical assessment of the surge, Biden arched an eyebrow. "Five weeks is a moment," Biden said.

Petraeus, for his part, said that "their data is our data." Maybe so, but their analysis is very different from Petraeus', and that just makes the question about methodological quality all the more pressing.

What if I told you that for every $1 you invested, your business would get $28 back?

A Business Week analysis of earmark and lobbying data shows just how lucrative hiring a lobbyist can be for a company looking for federal money:

The results suggest a startling conclusion: On average, companies generated roughly $28 in earmark revenue for every dollar they spent lobbying. And those at the very top did far better than the average: More than 20 companies pulled in $100 or more for every dollar spent. By any standard, that's a hefty ratio: The companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index brought in just $17.52 in revenues for every dollar of capital expenditure in 2006.

Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker are before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, and are still on opening statements. As they reiterated their statements, I noticed something in Petraeus' description of the credibility of his methodology for sectarian attacks and civilian casualties. Here's how Petraeus describd his "rigorous, consistent data collection and analysis:

Two US intelligence agencies recently reviewed our methodology, and they concluded that the data we produce is the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq.

As Josh noted yesterday, it would be nice to know which agencies these are, as CIA and DIA reportedly have qualms about MNF-I's methods. But looking at that statement closely, it may be possible to square the methodological circle. Notice that Petraeus didn't say that those agencies blessed MNF-I's methods as the "most accurate and authoritative," full-stop. He said that they found it's the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq. The alternative collection and analysis on Iraq is conducted by different agencies of the Iraqi government, which release sometimes-conflicting data. And needless to say, the Iraqi government has a huge incentive to downplay both civilian and especially sectarian casualties.

It would be hard for the professionals at MNF-I to have a worse methodology than the Iraqis. But that doesn't mean MNF-I has a better method of tallying both figures than other elements of the U.S. government. Perhaps the Senators today will get some clarification from Petraeus.

Larry Flynt has more information on Sen. David Vitter's (R-LA) extracurricular "activities" --particularly a four-month relationship with a former New Orleans prostitute-- that he plans to make public sometime soon. (Associated Press)

Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) has withdrawn from the board of a charity whose success over the past years has relied almost exclusively on the legislative procurements of Sen. John Murtha (D-PA). Pennsylvania Association for Individuals with Disabilities was launched with the help of Murtha several years ago, and has since been virtually dependent on funds obtained through his earmarks. Cleland left his position with the charity after Roll Call questioned him on his relationship with the organization. (Roll Call)

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) knows what's wrong the current FISA law: it's too restrictive. Bond wants retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms that aided the government in spying, perhaps the only request not granted to the President in the reform this summer. (Associated Press)

Democrats are focusing more and more on the case of ex-Governor Siegelman (D-AL). After yesterday's waving-off by the Justice Department of requests for more information on the government's prosecution, Democrats are seeing the imprisoned former politician as one of the clearest examples of partisan politics thoroughly corrupting the rule of law. (NY Times)

The Veteran Affairs Department has claimed that 95% of all veterans are able to receive scheduled care within 30 days of booking. However, a review by the Department's Inspector General found that percentage was closer to 75%, with a fair share of those waiting more than a month having serious service-related disabilities. (Associated Press)

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Out of all the slides and talk of statistics yesterday, there's one in particular that's stood out. This one:

In it, Gen. Petraeus has helpfully indicated the ambiguity of the timing of future troop reductions with tiny question marks. 2008 or beyond? Who knows?

In an analysis, Paul Richter of The Los Angeles Times says the takeaway is clear:

The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country -- perhaps more than 100,000 troops -- when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009....

But while Petraeus and Crocker made the administration's general goals clear, it left uncertain their thinking on a variety of key issues.

Nothing new was said, for example, on how the administration intends to try to break apart the governmental gridlock in Baghdad, which has obstructed the administration's plan to bring about national reconciliation through agreements by the national government. Does the administration want to try to overhaul the badly balkanized government, or empower the local governments?

Also unanswered was what course the administration will take if it turns out that fewer U.S. forces are unable to maintain the current level of security when the five brigades leave by summer.

Those issues most likely will be left for the next president, whose new job is looking tougher all the time.

Gen. Petraeus almost made it through today's marathon hearing without a question about his September 2004 op-ed in the Washington Post claiming that training for the Iraqi security forces -- which he then commanded -- was going well. Almost.

Not much of that op-ed looks prescient today. Among its claims:

By early spring, nine academies in Iraq and one in Jordan will be graduating a total of 5,000 police each month from the eight-week course, which stresses patrolling and investigative skills, substantive and procedural legal knowledge, and proper use of force and weaponry, as well as pride in the profession and adherence to the police code of conduct.

Nearly three years later, the Jones commission found that the police have practically no investigative or forensic skills to speak of, and that the Iraqi Army -- considered the more competent and trustworthy service -- is at least a year away from having the capacity to take over the country. While it's hard to say that any specific statistic in the op-ed is wrong, events didn't bear out Petraeus' portrait of an increasingly competent security force.

In response to a question from Rep Eliot Engel (D-NY), however, Petraeus defended the piece.

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Back in July, Democrats asked the Justice Department for internal documents relating to a trio of controversial prosecutions -- cases where suspicions were high of political interference. They were the prosecution of Georgia Thompson in Wisconsin, former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL), and Dr. Cyril Wecht, a Democratic coroner in Pennsylvania.

Last week, the Justice Department replied by providing documents -- most of them already public case filings (although there was one telling email). The Department did not turn over documents that Congress was really after, internal memoranda discussing the cases. Such "deliberative" material, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski wrote in a letter, could not be turned over, because it would have a chilling effect on "candid internal deliberations." In a letter today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and other members called that response "unacceptable" and asked to work out some arrangement to view the documents (see below).

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Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) didn't have much success in getting Gen. Petraeus to go into more detail about how he's derived his statistics for civilian casualties and sectarian attacks. Petraeus reminded Smith -- who misspoke by claiming Petraeus didn't present his total-casualty stats -- that he's presented Congress with the statistics that he has. But notice that Petraeus doesn't answer Smith's question about how Shiite-on-Shiite attacks or other, murkier "ethno-sectarian violence" (to use the general's phrase) gets classified.

Rep Vic Snyder (D-AK) took a look at Gen. Petraeus' plan for drawing down troops and had a question: how long will we ultimately be in Iraq? Petraeus didn't answer.

Notice that over some unspecified period of time, Petraeus envisions drawing down to five U.S. brigades, for strategic and operational "overwatch" purposes, which would mean between 20,000 and 25,000 troops remaining in the country. In fairness, this is a question for President Bush -- more realistically, his successor -- but getting an answer is still critical.

Both Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker endorsed the White House's upcoming benchmark report -- the one that the White House will want to call the Petraeus Report. "I don't think that there is any substantive change in that report, according to the draft I saw the other day, nothing substantive whatsoever that was different in that report," Petraeus said. Crocker assented.

Here's a surprise: Gen. Petraeus told Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) that his command and the Maliki government have a standing committee to work out timetables for transferring control of Iraqi provinces to the Iraqis. Those timetables are apparently classified, but Petraeus said he'd get them to the House Armed Services Committee.

It would be interesting to know how the timetable for turning over Iraqi provinces corresponds to Gen. Petraeus' cautious recommendations on troop withdrawals. He said that the timetables can slip, owing to circumstances -- Diyala will take longer, owing to the infusion of insurgents to Baquba since the surge; Anbar will be turned over in January 2008 -- which is fair enough.

But does Petraeus envision a departure of forces from a province back to the U.S., or a reassignment of forces to a different one? Or will U.S. forces simply remain in some provinces in support roles? After all, at some point, all 18 provinces will be turned over. What will happen to U.S. forces then? Or will certain provinces -- say, Baghdad, which is its own province -- not be turned over in any foreseeable time frame?

Also, if Petraeus can say openly that Anbar can be handed over in January 2008, why should the rest of the timetables be classified?

As if he read this post, Gen. Petraeus offered his definition of sectarian violence for his tabulations: "acts taken by individual by one ethno-sectarian grouping against another." He added that "it's not that complicated": if "al-Qaeda bombs a Shiite area," it's sectarian violence. Fair enough, but it raises the question: how do you know when a bombing in a certain area is perpetrated by al-Qaeda? Andrew Tilghman documents in the Washington Monthly how MNF-I over-attributes violence in Iraq to al-Qaeda.

One thing that Petraeus specifically denied: a senior intelligence official's claim to the Washington Post that MNF-I tabulates sectarian killings by whether a bullet enters the head through the back or the front.

While Gen. Petraeus repeatedly cited the Sunni tribal turn against al-Qaeda as the most significant development in Iraq over the last year, he balks at the suggestion that his command is providing them with guns. "We have never given weapons to tribals," he said. "What we have done is applaud when they ask if they can point their guns at al-Qaeda."

But that's a precious distinction. As the New York Times reported yesterday:

Under the project, financed by the American military, the local tribes are paid $10 a day per man to provide security in their areas.

Despite protestations from United States commanders that they are not arming those “volunteers,” local American officers confirm that the sheiks can spend the contract money as they wish, diverting money from wages to buy weapons, radios or vehicles if they choose.

Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) wasn't buying Amb. Crocker's portrait of sotto voce reconciliation efforts. Crocker, however, decided to double down, saying that the "Sunnis are now linking to the federal government by being part of the police force."

Unfortunately, the Shiite government believes, and not without reason, that the Sunni infusion into the local police and Iraqi Army will ultimately lead to a coup. Witness one Sunni recently telling The New York Times that "If we get into the Iraqi police we can move to Mahmudiya and Yusufiya and south Baghdad to free them and kill all the militias.”

To Crocker, those provincial moves against al-Qaeda "could be the seeds of reconciliation."

At several points during his testimony, Crocker has stated that "fundamental questions" over what sort of country Iraq will be is hindering reconciliation, while simultaneously hinting that such reconciliation is already occurring in miniature. Both statements can't be true at once.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) asked Gen. Petraeus why his withdrawal plan is so circumscribed when other military officials -- including the Central Command chief, Admiral William Fallon -- believe a more rapid draw-down is possible and responsible, as The Washington Post reported this weekend. "A senior civilian official" told the Post that calling relations between Fallon and Petraeus "bad" would be "the understatement of the century."

During the hearing, however, Petraeus called his plan his "best professional military judgment," and stated that both Admiral Fallon "fully supports" his recommendations, "as do the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

A few minutes later, Petraeus stated that he believes Fallon is the victim of mistaken press accounts. Supposedly there was a Central Command assessment taking a much longer view of the Iraq situation, and not in conflict with Petraeus' own. Fallon, he said, agrees with Petraeus' view.

And you thought the surge hadn't yielded tangible political gains. According to Amb. Crocker, the surge has "changed the dynamic" politically "for the better," as it has given Iraqis the "time and space to reflect on the kind of country they want." Significantly, Crocker is not conceding that reconciliation is failing, but attempting to change the terms of the debate.

As expected, Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified that the benchmarks aren't the only, or even the most important, indicators of political progress. "The seeds of reconciliation are being planted," said Crocker, referring to Iraqis in government discussing federalism and oil-wealth revenue sharing.

That's mightily convenient, given that Iraq isn't meeting the benchmarks, according to the GAO.

Update: You can read Crocker's opening remarks here.

So much for the surge ending in the spring of 2008. Petraeus said that in order to preserve the gains made in security, he's recommended drawing down one brigade combat team -- about 5,000 troops -- by December, with the remaining 25,000 or so troops of the surge out by July 2008. Any further draw-downs will have to wait for his further assessment -- coming in March 2008. So March 2008 is the new September 2007.

Update: This was demonstrated in one of the briefing slides:

General Petraeus brought out his data today, saying that two U.S. intelligence agencies back his methodology. He did not explain -- yet -- what that methodology is, but said that it has remained consistent over at least a year, which would predate Petraeus' arrival in Iraq.

Petraeus' information appears to measure attacks week by week. He didn't give comparisons to overall attacks in 2006, but opted instead to measure from discrete points in 2006: December for measures of overall violence; June 2006 for IED violence; October 2006 for attacks in Anbar province.

We'll have Petraeus' slides for you to see shortly.

Update: You can see the slides here.

Update: You can read Petraeus' opening remarks here.

The parents of former Alaska Rep. Vic Kohring, indicted for allegedly selling his vote on an oil pipeline proposal to Veco executives, have asked at least seven lobbyists for contributions to their son's legal defense fund, KTUU reports, appearances be damned:

"I think if Rep. Kohring really wants to try and say he honestly wasn't influenced illegally by this money, then I would find a different way to raise money than to ask lobbyists for it," [House Speaker John Harris] said.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) officially filed the paperwork to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing he only signed off on the deal because he was panicked after having just defended himself against accusations from The Idaho Statesman that he is gay.

The documents (available here) include an affidavit from Craig where he offers details on how he recalls the bathroom sting, including harmlessly reaching for a piece of paper with his right hand. He also mentions that he "spread his legs," though no note of an exceptionally wide stance.

One thing to watch for during General Petraeus' testimony today and tomorrow: Will he continue to insist on keeping classified his command's methodology for determining which civilian attacks count as sectarian violence?

Petraeus has made numerous assertions that sectarian violence has fallen dramatically, but so far, he hasn't explained how he's derived the basis for the claim. But on Friday, the head of the Government Accountability Office, David Walker, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Petraeus' methodology isn't something agencies throughout the government have confidence in.

Much to the chagrin of the Pentagon, the report released by Walker's GAO last week found that average daily attacks against civilians had remained flat during the lifetime of the surge. Which of those attacks qualified as sectarian violence? GAO found it wasn't clear that, contra Petraeus, sectarian attacks were on the decline, since it -- and other agencies within the government -- found the methodology for such a calculation dubious. According to the Washington Post, shooting someone in the back of the head is a sign of sectarian violence to Petraeus, but a frontal shot isn't.

I asked Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), Petraeus' command, how it calculated sectarian violence last week, and I still haven't gotten a response. But here's what Walker told Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) (the classified annex of the GAO report contains much more about Petraeus' methodology):

First, [Petraeus'] data will show that sectarian violence is going down in recent months. He will show that. Secondly, we have -- we cannot get comfortable with the methodology that's used to determine of total violence, which is sectarian and which is nonsectarian related. It's extremely difficult to do that. I mean, you know, people don't necessarily leave calling cards, you know, when certain things happen. And even if there is, you know, some type of attempt to leave information -- you don't know the accuracy or reliability of it. And so we've said that his data will show it's gone down. We're not comfortable with the methodology. And please read the classified report, because it's not just our view.

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It took some time and effort, but, with the aid of TPM readers, we've obtained two complete lists of monthly Iraqi civilian casualties from January 2006 forward. Taking these numbers on their own terms, they do not bear out the claims made by the Bush administration and U.S. military that the surge has reduced Iraqi civilian casualties. Comparing each month's death toll in 2007 to the death toll from that same month in 2006, the numbers show that surge has not made Iraq safer for the civilian population. By some measurements, Iraqis are in greater danger than a year ago.

It's a sign of how skewed the debate over the Iraq War is that these numbers are not readily available. Different Iraqi government agencies present different casualty figures. The U.S. military's own casualty total is said to rely on the Iraqis, but it's unclear which Iraqi agency it uses or what adjustments are made to the Iraqi figures. Even as today's testimony from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is considered a possible make-or-break moment for U.S. policy on Iraq, with the Bush Administration and the Pentagon touting the success of the surge in reducing civilian casualties, there is no general agreement on what civilian casualties have been or on what the most accurate methodology for tallying casualties is.

The two lists presented here rely on statistics gathered by the Associated Press and by Iraq Body Count, a reputable British organization that has done Herculean work in compiling civilian-casualty data. It's important to note that these lists aren't comprehensive. Tallying Iraqi civilian casualties is an incomplete and arduous task, made extremely difficult by the situation on the ground. Both surveys readily acknowledge that their figures are undercounts of the true Iraqi civilian casualty rate. But the significance of these two charts is that each study employs its own internally consistent methodology for determining Iraqi casualties and has done so over a significant period of time, allowing an independent assessment -- albeit imprecise -- to measure against what we'll hear from Petraeus and Crocker.

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Ted Olson is "leading the pack" as the administration's likely next attorney general, Roll Call reports (pdf).

Olson would be a tough sell. After all, most Democrats, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) opposed Olson when he came up for confirmation for solicitor general in 2001 (he passed 51-47). The memory of Olson's role as a lawyer for Bush in the 2000 recount imbroglio was fresh. And Olson's history as a member of The American Spectator's board of directors during the so-called "Arkansas Project" in the 90's, when the magazine, backed by millions from millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, set to ending Clinton's presidency by scandal, also became a major issue. As Leahy put it, his concern was that Olson's "sharp partisanship over the last several years might not be something that he could leave behind." Given Democrats' expressed desire for a less partisan nominee to succeed Gonzales, it's hard to see how Leahy wouldn't have similar concerns today.

Roll Call reports on how Olson might play this time around:

At press time GOP and Democratic aides said it was unclear how receptive Democratic lawmakers will be to an Olson nomination. The Conference appears to be split between longtime Washington insiders who view Olson as a reliable member of their ranks and relative newcomers who see him as the principal architect of Bush’s successful legal campaign in the messy aftermath of the 2000 presidential race. While those familiar with Olson likely would confirm him, the Conference’s other faction seems to be in no mood to back him.

The senior Democratic aide said that while positions will become clearer once a formal nomination has been made, at this point it is impossible to tell whether Olson could make it through the Senate. A veteran GOP aide agreed, saying, “I can’t get a good read” from Democrats.

Note: Olson has spent the last several years as a partner at his old firm, Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, where he continues to represent Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who's under federal investigation for appropriations funny business.

Today The New York Times gives a rundown of the controversy surrounding ex-Gov. Don Siegelman's (D-AL) prosecution, with the Republican lawyer at the center of the controversy set to trek to Washington to meet with a House Judiciary panel Friday.

The Op-Ed draws a comparison between Siegelman's prosecution and the case against Georgia Thompson, a civil servant in Wisconsin whose corruption case was thrown out on appeal because the court found the evidence against her to be "beyond thin."

The Bush administration insists that the United States attorney scandal is a non-scandal. But the Siegelman and Thompson cases are a reminder that when the power of the state to imprison people is put in the wrong hands, lives can be ruined and democracy can be threatened. Since the Justice Department refuses to appoint an independent prosecutor to examine whether these and other cases were politicized, Congress must provide the scrutiny.

General Petraeus will go before Congress this afternoon to argue that the surge is working -- that sectarian killings and attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces are substantially down. The military's secret numbers will serve as support for those conclusions, even as numbers from within the government (e.g. those collected by the Defense Intelligence Agency) dispute them.

We'll have more on the numbers game a little later. But from Petraeus' perspective, the question appears closed. We're making progress -- just how much is a secondary question. As he wrote in a recent letter to U.S. forces, we're "a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are driving down the field." We have the ball!

Accordingly, Petraeus' counsel to the president, The New York Times reports this morning, is to make March the new September. As a concession to those who worry about military preparedness and are calling for a draw down, one Army brigade, a unit that was in place before the surge, would depart in December. The full force minus that reduction of 4,000 would stay in place through March of next year. Then, and only then, would Petraeus make a decision about bringing the number to pre-surge levels -- possibly by next summer. Anything sooner, a military official tells the Times, would be "premature."

But there are no guarantees:

Even as American commanders plan to reduce the overall force, they have stressed that the troop reductions could be adjusted or delayed if violence increases. Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, has said one important factor being weighed is whether attacks increase during the approaching Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as has happened in the past.

“Ramadan is big,” General Odierno said last week. “So far in the 30 days before Ramadan, violence has been going down.”

“If we can continue to do what we are doing, we’ll get to such a level where we think we can do it with less troops,” he added.

Presumably next Ramadan will be the true test of whether the strategy is working?

Did anyone ever think the surge was going to work? The Washington Post walks through the history of the surge, from the fallacy of the "Anbar miracle," the false assurances of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the reluctance of the Maliki government. Most striking is the raging dissension between Petraeus and his commanding officer, who is responsible for the greater Middle East region (Afghanistan, anyone? Horn of Africa?). With Petraeus on the Hill this week, it is easy to get lost in the minutiae; take a few minutes to refresh yourself on how far the policy has strayed. (Washington Post)

The bombs are dropping in six minutes! Well, not quite that dramatic, but getting close from CIA Director Michael Hayden, who claimed Friday that the waning public and political support for new "aggressive" CIA methods was creating a world that felt an awful lot like September 10th. (LA Times)

Remember back in the day when you had to be on the government's A-list to get one of those coveted National Security Letters? It turns out they weren't as exclusive as we thought. The FBI, until recently, had been obtaining information (without the use of warrants) about targeted suspects and their "community of interest"- aka anyone with whom they are in contact. (NY Times)

Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) slept on the couch of his former chief of staff Neil Volz. Take a second to let that one sink in, then check out information released in Volz's recent court letters. Apparently Ney wasn't exactly an ideal roommate. (The Plain Dealer)

Want to hear more from David Petraeus? You're going to have to tune in to his one-hour EXCLUSIVE interview on Fox News. As in, no other networks get a shot. Not even TPM! (Think Progress)

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To an outsider, New Jersey politics often seems like a den of corruption. The latest series of arrests doesn’t do much to change that reputation.

This week, eleven local politicians and one co-conspirator were arrested as part of a statewide bribery scandal. The crowd runs the gamut of the political scene: mayors, assembly members, staffers and local council members have all been charged. The list is dominated by ten Democrats, although one Republican makes it a bipartisan affair.

The story is slowly unfolding, as the FBI has only disclosed enough information to provide probable cause for the arrests. But it is clear that the operation began in the town of Pleasantville, where FBI agents posed as representatives from an insurance company and a roofing agency. Agents met individually with members of the town’s education council, setting up deals throughout the past year to pay cash bribes in exchange for contracts.

It would have made for a quick story of small town corruption, but the Pleasantville school board members recommended that their new FBI friends look for more "business" upstate. From there, the FBI’s insurance company bounced from willing politician to willing politician, taking them to the cities of Newark, Orange, Passaic and Patterson. As in all prime cases of local corruption, underhanded deals were carried out in parked cars and restaurants.

The two highest ranked officials are Alfred Steele, a state assemblyman, and Mims Hackett, Jr., also an assemblyman as well as the mayor of Orange. It was on Steele’s recommendation that investigators were introduced to Hackett; both men promised to help the would-be insurers obtain state contracts in exchange for cash.

Christopher Christie, the U.S. Attorney leading the investigation, took a play out of the Giuliani textbook. He organized a series of public arrests complete with handcuffs and leg shackles for the twelve, who were released on bail Thursday and left to shirk the herd of reporters on their own. (Steele resorted to running away from the press, which resulted in a rush-hour traffic jam.) Still, the Democratic leadership have been quick to challenge claims that Christie is playing partisan politics. Senate President Richard Codey addressed local Democrats on Friday saying, "these questions about whether the U.S. Attorney is too political, that's not the question. He didn't put a gun to anyone's head and force them to put their hand in the cookie jar."

As of now, both Steele and Hackett look set to resign their positions on Monday. We'll see if the immediate response of outrage by local Democrats helps to ameliorate the reputation that New Jersey is still the home of Tony Soprano and dirty politicians.