The Impeachment Factor

This may be more striking to me because I covered the controversy six years ago and saw, in person, how angry McCain was. In a way this is more of a flip-flop than McCain's embrace of Jerry Falwell.

"It's not exactly news that John McCain is perfectly happy cozying up to his old adversaries if that's what it takes for him to get to the White House," says Jason Zengerle in the New Republic, "but all the hubbub over McCain's rapprochement with Jerry Falwell seems to have overshadowed some of the other, uh, fence-mending he's been doing of late. Earlier this week, McCain let the Texas businessmen and brothers Charles and Sam Wyly host a fundraiser for him in Dallas.

"The Wyly brothers, as you may remember, funded a front-group called Republicans for Clean Air that spent $2.5 million during the 2000 Republican presidential primary savaging McCain's environmental record; given the Wylys' long friendship with the Bush family--plus the $200,000 they'd given to George W. Bush's campaigns--it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out whom Republicans for Clean Air was really working for. McCain certainly had no doubt. At the time he referred to the Wyly brothers as Bush's 'sleazy Texas buddies.'

"But that, apparently, is all water under the bridge. As McCain adviser John Weaver told The Dallas Morning News the day before the fundraiser:

" Senator McCain has made a career of always trying to look forward and do what's best for the country. That began with normalizing relations with Vietnam. Once you can do that, you can do anything.

"Who knew self-growth and forgiveness could be so rewarding?"

Pretty wiley.

Is the press letting Mike Chertoff get away with a double flip off the high-dive board? Eric Boehlert has the goods?

"Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff thinks the idea of deploying National Guard troops to secure the U.S.-Mexican border would be 'a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem,' mostly because the Guard 'is not trained for the mission.' Chertoff insists that 'Unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way. I think there's a smarter way to do it.'

"At least that's what Chertoff told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly just six months ago on national television.

"Since Bush floated the Guard idea during his primetime address on immigration reform this week, Chertoff has caved on the issue and gone before the cameras to back the plan for Guard troops patrolling the border. (i.e. 'We have used the National Guard and the military in support of the Border Patrol for about two decades, so this is not new.') As for his previous, unequivocal statement about the whole thing being a 'horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem'? That's been flushed down the media memory hole."

Was that USA Today account of big phone companies cooperating with the NSA wrong?