Is Bush Losing Congress?

" 'The president's best bet for the next two weeks is to try to see if he can get Americans to stop doing discretionary driving without creating panic,' said Amy Myers Jaffe, research fellow at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy. 'He's in a very challenging position.' "

Cheney's Cane

The Associated Press reports: "Vice President Dick Cheney walked with a cane Wednesday as he returned to work at the White House after weekend surgery to repair aneurysms behind both knees.

"Cheney appeared to move gingerly in the Rose Garden when he appeared with President Bush and military leaders. Bush glanced behind him to see the vice president's progress down several steps."

Valerie Plame (Non) Watch

Media Nation blogger Dan Kennedy writes about Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff's exasperation that neither the New York Times nor Time magazine pursued the story of who had revealed Plame's identity.

" 'Our primary obligation is not to protect our sources. Our primary obligation is to inform our readers. And I think in the Plame matter there has been a bit of blurring of that fundamental point,' Isikoff said. 'Once you make a promise of confidentiality, you've got to keep it. But that doesn't end the conversation. That doesn't end the reporting. You're still a reporter. You can't use that conversation, because it was conducted off the record and you're honor-bound to that. But don't stop your reporting.' "

Time reporter Matthew Cooper, Isikoff said, "should have kept contacting Rove, attempting to cajole him into going on the record and leaning on him with information gleaned from other sources. Instead, Isikoff asserted, 'It seems like Time stopped reporting.' "

Pardon Watch

CBSNews.com reports: "President Bush granted pardons Wednesday to 14 people, including a member of the mineworkers union who was convicted for his role in bombings at a West Virginia coal mine, a counterfeiter and a bootlegger. . . .

"CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller reports that the pardons Wednesday bring to 58 the number of pardons granted by Mr. Bush.

"By comparison, his father, former President George H.W. Bush, granted 74 in four years; former President Bill Clinton granted 396 in eight years; former President Ronald Reagan did 393 in eight; former President Jimmy Carter did 534 in four. And former President Richard Nixon, who got one of Mr. Ford's 382 pardons, granted 863, reports Knoller."

So the Bushes are not a forgiving bunch?

The Associated Press has more on Rufus Edward Harris's pardon. He was sentenced to two years in prison for selling bootleg whiskey more than 40 years ago.

"Harris requested the pardon about four years ago, his wife, Frankie, recalled.

" 'He just said he was so sorry that he had that on his record,' said Frankie Harris, who cried when she heard the news. 'He just wanted to clear his record before he died.'

"When nobody contacted them after awhile, she said, Rufus Harris figured he'd been turned down for a pardon.

"The 71-year-old former car and tractor salesman was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease about a year ago, his wife said. He cannot walk anymore or feed himself."

Dream On

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., writing in the Financial Times, dreams about what he would say if Bush asked him for advice on Iraq. "I would seize an appropriate moment to declare victory - and cut and run, Mr President. . . . [O]ur true national interests lie in ending this senseless war."

Jim Hoagland writes in a Washington Post op-ed: "What George W. Bush needs right now is his own version of Clark Clifford. He needs a friend close enough to tell him that his presidency is failing -- and wise enough to describe what Bush must do to salvage it."

White House, Watch Out!

The new Reliable Sourcettes are coming after your dirty laundry.

In their Live Online discussion yesterday, new Washington Post gossip columnists Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts promised "to OWN the Jenna Bush beat" -- and to ask the White House other questions the regular press corps won't.

'Waving Like a Maniac'

Steven Elbow writes in the Capital Times of Madison, Wisc.: "Madison's Ray and Diane Maida say they were treated to an example of how President Bush just doesn't get it as they participated in the anti-war protest in Washington.

"The Maidas, who lost their son, Mark, to a roadside bomb south of Baghdad last May, were standing outside the White House Monday morning when they saw a motorcade approach. They quickly donned T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of their dead son as an act of protest.

"The president, spying the couple on the sidewalk from his limousine, smiled and waved.

" 'He was waving like a maniac,' Ray Maida said. 'He thought we were there to support him. He was clueless that we were there to show him the face of war.' "