The Impeachment Factor

"BellSouth asked USA TODAY on Thursday to 'retract the false and unsubstantiated statements' about the company that it contends were in a May 11 story about a database of domestic calling records maintained by the National Security Agency. . . .

"Steve Anderson, a USA TODAY spokesman, said 'We did receive the letter this afternoon. We are reviewing it, and we will be responding.'"

Uh, shouldn't the editor, not the PR guy, be responding?

Josh Marshall discovers that there may be pork in the battle against immigration:

"The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a 'virtual fence' along the nation's land borders.

"Even on the downward side of the mountain, all the cronies get a taste. I guess Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrup Grumman bid so it can seem like a competitive process when Halliburton gets the contract?"

I wrote the other day how liberal bloggers were ripping Hillary as, among other things, insufficiently liberal. Check out this report from WNBC :

"Actress Susan Sarandon, a longtime liberal political activist and outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, endorsed an anti-war Democrat challenging Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's re-election bid Tuesday.

"Sarandon is backing Jonathan Tasini, a labor advocate and former president of the National Writers' Union, who has based his longshot campaign on Clinton's vote in 2002 authorizing military intervention in Iraq. . . .

"Sarandon has been a harsh critic of Clinton's vote on the war, telling a British television interviewer last month that Clinton had "crumbled under the pressure of the moment." She also told ITV1 that she wasn't enthusiastic about a Clinton presidential candidacy."