Rove's Risky Embrace

"In proposing hearings around the country in July and August, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has made plain that he and other Republicans are willing to scuttle Bush's top domestic priority rather than give ground on Senate legislation -- backed by the president -- that would provide a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants.

"The hearings will hand a giant megaphone to vocal conservatives, who White House officials had hoped would be overshadowed by the president's more moderate tone on how to rewrite immigration laws. And that is a major setback for Bush and GOP strategists who worry that rhetoric lambasting the citizenship provision will alienate the nation's growing number of Latino voters.

"Also, the House decision to conduct the public hearings seems to all but ensure another high-profile policy flameout for a president who, after winning reelection in 2004, promised to spend his political capital on bold initiatives."

Battle of the Bulge

Sunday on CNN , White House press secretary Tony Snow suggested that Americans would have wanted to abandon World War II if they'd been polled in December 1944.

Said Snow: "The president understands people's impatience -- not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?"

Liberal bloggers responded with immediate outrage at a statement they called wrong and defamatory.

Yesterday, Josh Marshall came up with a new piece of evidence -- this chart -- which shows "no downtick in public support for the war around the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Approval for President Roosevelt's conduct of the war continued at around 70% where it had been for years. The number of people who said they had a clear idea of what the war was about was at about the same level and appears to have been rising . . . .

"[T]he basic picture is clear: the American people then, as they will now, will stick through a lot of adversity if they think the war they're fighting matters and that their president knows what he's doing.

"Then they did. Now they don't."

Thorns and Roses

Mark Silva blogs for the Chicago Tribune about a photo op during which Bush and Austrian President Heinz Fischer were flanked by statuesque Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "This is called thorns between two roses," Bush said.

Early to Bed

Jennifer Loven writes for the Associated Press: "Early to bed, early to rise. That's a typical day at the White House, says Laura Bush.

" 'We get up about 5:30 a.m. The president gets up and goes in and gets the coffee and brings it back to me in bed. Very nice of him,' she said Wednesday, answering a question during a round-table with foreign exchange students. . . .