Bush: Blair's No Poodle

"Support for President Bush matched his lowest rank ever in a CNN poll, with 32 percent saying they approve the way he is handling his job, and 66 percent saying they disapprove, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

"That's a drop of 6 points from the 38 percent of respondents who said on May 4-6 that they approved of Bush's handling of his job, and equal to the 32 percent he got in a poll conducted in April 2006."

Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee write in the New York Times that a new poll of Americans ages 17 to 29 finds that they "share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group."

The Lugar Defection

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Karen DeYoung and Shailagh Murray write in The Washington Post: "Key Republican senators, signaling increasing GOP skepticism about President Bush's strategy in Iraq, have called for a reduction in U.S. forces and launched preemptive efforts to counter a much-awaited administration progress report due in September. . . .

"Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. military escalation begun in the spring has 'very limited' prospects for success. He called on Bush to begin reducing U.S. forces."

DeYoung and Murray note that Lugar and Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, were among many GOP lawmakers who supported the inclusion of political and military benchmarks and a Sept. 15 deadline for a progress report from the administration. . . .

"One provision, sponsored by Warner, created a commission of retired four-star officers and other military experts to independently assess whether Iraqi security forces are willing or able to end their own sectarian divisions and take a lead role in defending their country.

"Warner said he knows that his push for the measure makes it appear that he does not trust Bush, Petraeus and Crocker to provide an honest report. 'I accept that critique,' he said in an interview. 'But what are we to do? Be totally reliant on the executive branch for their analysis?'"

Edward Epstein writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a respected fixture of the Washington foreign policy establishment and generally a GOP loyalist. When he speaks, colleagues sit up straight and notice. And his words Monday evening in a floor speech to a largely empty Senate chamber spurred some to predict the tide had turned in Congress' standoff with Bush over pursuing the Iraq war."

Renee Schoof and Margaret Talev write for McClatchy Newspapers: "A day after Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, bluntly declared that President Bush's Iraq plan isn't working and called for withdrawing most American forces, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said he was writing Bush on Tuesday to urge him to embrace a Plan E (for exit)."

At yesterday's briefing, White House press secretary Tony Snow said: "Look, Dick Lugar is a serious guy, so obviously you take it seriously. But on the other hand, again, he voted against the original -- he voted against the surge. He's somebody who has had reservations."

But there was no vote on the surge specifically. And Lugar has voted with the president down the line on Iraq. As Noam N. Levey writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Although Lugar and Voinovich voiced skepticism about the deployment of additional troops when the president announced his plans in January, neither lawmaker has supported any of the efforts by Democrats or Republicans to formally challenge Bush.

Jeff Zeleny writes in the New York Times: "For months, Mr. Lugar has kept his skepticism about the president's Iraq policy largely to himself, seldom offering anything beyond a hopeful wait-and-see statement."

Cheney, Part IV

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Jo Becker and Barton Gellman conclude their huge Washington Post series on Vice President Cheney with a look at his environmental impact.

Cheney got the Interior Department to reverse itself on a decision that would have cut off irrigation water to some Oregon farmers and ranchers. "What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River. . . .

"The Klamath case is one of many in which the vice president took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business.

"By combining unwavering ideological positions -- such as the priority of economic interests over protected fish -- with a deep practical knowledge of the federal bureaucracy, Cheney has made an indelible mark on the administration's approach to everything from air and water quality to the preservation of national parks and forests.

"It was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed account so far of her departure.

"The vice president also pushed to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain the nation's repository for nuclear and radioactive waste, aides said, a victory for the nuclear power industry over those with long-standing safety concerns. And his office was a powerful force behind the White House's decision to rewrite a Clinton-era land-protection measure that put nearly a third of the national forests off limits to logging, mining and most development, former Cheney staff members said."

Becker and Gellman talk to one Cheney-installed Interior Department lackey named Paul Hoffman, who said Cheney never told him what to do. He didn't have to. "'His genius,' Hoffman said, is that 'he builds networks and puts the right people in the right places, and then trusts them to make well-informed decisions that comport with his overall vision.'"

In one of Gellman's video anecdotes, he reports: "Karl Rove, according to witnesses, has called Cheney 'the management' in the Bush White House. In an interview with us, Rove denied it."

A Cheney Reversal (Sort of)

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Michael Abramowitz writes in The Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney's office offered its first public written explanation yesterday for its refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified material, arguing that the order makes clear that the vice president is not subject to the oversight system it creates for federal agencies.

"In a letter to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Cheney Chief of Staff David S. Addington wrote that the order treats the vice president the same as the president and distinguishes them both from 'agencies' subject to the oversight provisions of the executive order.

"Addington did not cite specific language in the executive order supporting this view, and a Cheney spokeswoman could not point to such language last night. . . .

"Addington did not repeat a separate argument that has been previously advanced by Cheney's office: that it is not strictly an executive branch agency but also shares legislative functions because the vice president presides over the Senate. That argument has drawn ridicule in recent days from Democrats and on late-night television."

But as Abramowitz writes: "Addington's legal argument yesterday has previously been rejected by the director of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, J. William Leonard."

Mike Allen writes for Politico: "The White House has no plans to reassert the argument there is any vice presidential distinction from the executive branch, the officials said."

Ruth Marcus writes in her Washington Post opinion column: "Let's admit it: We in the media haven't had this much fun with Vice President Cheney since he shot a man in the face and neglected, for a while, to tell the boss. And let's admit: Like that episode, this one doesn't matter much on its own. . . .

"Of all the vice president's excesses, this one barely registers on the Cheney Scale. Its seismic impact, rather, stems from the combination of so many Cheneyesque attributes: mania for secrecy, resistance to oversight, willingness to twist the law and assertion of unreviewable power. . . .

"As maddening as the vice president's above-the-law attitude is the way he and his staff respond when challenged: first, the silent treatment, then the legal bait and switch."

A Rovian Plot?

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Adam Nossiter writes in the New York Times: "The convicted former governor of Alabama, Don E. Siegelman, faced prosecutors who urged a long prison sentence here on Tuesday in a federal corruption case that has unexpectedly transcended the confines of this sleepy state capital. . . .

"Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, tried to paint a bigger picture, saying he was a victim of Karl Rove, the senior political adviser in the White House.

"'The origins of this case are political,' Mr. Siegelman said. 'There's no question that Karl Rove's fingerprints are all over this case, from the inception.' . . .

"Mr. Siegelman and his backers refer to the affidavit of a Republican lawyer, released this month, that appears to implicate Mr. Rove. The lawyer, Jill Simpson, claims to have heard a top Alabama Republican operative with longstanding links to Mr. Rove boast over the phone in 2002 that Mr. Siegelman's political career would soon be scuttled.

"The operative, Bill Canary, was speaking with the son of Mr. Siegelman's Republican rival, Bob Riley, now the state's governor: 'William "Bill" Canary told him not to worry, that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman,' Ms. Simpson said in the affidavit."

Tom Hamburger and David G. Savage write in the Los Angeles Times: "The controversy in part reflects the loss of credibility suffered by the Bush Justice Department in the wake of evidence that Rove and members of his staff played a role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. . . .

"White House spokesman Tony Fratto waved away the controversy, saying: 'Someone is always making some baseless charge about Karl. Unfortunately I can't comment in this case while legal proceedings are ongoing.'"

Patricia C. McCarter of the Huntsville Times writes: "Coincidentally, Rove was in Alabama on Thursday with President Bush as he toured the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Athens. When asked about Siegelman's allegations that he was pulling the puppet strings behind the ex-governor's prosecution, Rove smiled and denied it.

"'I know nothing about any phone call,' Rove said.

"Then a White House press aide stepped up and said, 'What he meant to say was that he has no comment.'"

But like Fratto's response, Rove's was a non-denial denial. As Laura McGann writes for TPM Muckraker: "No one has accused of Rove of being involved in the call -- just that his name was mentioned in it."

Brett Kavanaugh Watch

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Ari Shapiro reports for NPR: "One of President Bush's most controversial judicial appointees, Brett Kavanaugh, may have been less-than-forthright with Congress at a crucial hearing last year to confirm his appointment to a seat on the powerful federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.

"Kavanaugh told senators in May 2006 that he 'was not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants' during his time as a White House lawyer. Now, it is clear that Kavanaugh took part in at least one White House conversation about detainees."

Kavanaugh's statement at the time: "Senator, I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants, and so I do not have any involvement with that."

But Shapiro reports: "In fact, in 2002, Kavanaugh and a group of top White House lawyers discussed whether the Supreme Court would uphold the Bush administration's decision to deny lawyers to American enemy combatants. Kavanaugh advised the group that the Supreme Court's swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy, would probably reject the president's assertion that the men were not entitled to counsel. Kavanaugh had worked as a clerk for Kennedy. That meeting was first reported in The Washington Post. NPR independently confirmed the details with multiple sources.

"Today, Kavanaugh has life tenure as a judge on the D.C. Circuit appeals court.

"Durbin now says he feels 'perilously close to being lied to' at Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing."

The CIA's Jewels

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Scott Shane writes in the New York Times: "Comparisons between different historical eras are always tricky. With an incomplete account of C.I.A. misdeeds in its first quarter century from the so-called family jewels, released this week with many redactions, and a presumably even more incomplete knowledge of the spy agencies' actions since 2001, such a comparison is inevitably flawed.

"But it is also irresistible. And it raises a provocative question: do the actions of the intelligence agencies in the era of Al Qaeda, which include domestic eavesdropping without warrants, secret detentions and interrogations arguably bordering on torture, already match or even eclipse those of the Vietnam War period?

"At both times, Americans faced a hostile global ideology -- communism then, violent Islamic jihadism today -- and feared cells hidden in their midst. In the face of such a threat, it may be no surprise that secret agencies, wielding powerful technology and with the formidable backing of a president, sometimes come into conflict with democratic ideals.

On Tuesday, the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, wrote in a message to agency employees: "I firmly believe that the improved system of intelligence oversight that came out of the 1970s gives the C.I.A. a far stronger place in our democratic system. What we do now to protect Americans we do within a powerful framework of law and review."

But Shane writes that "independent historians of the agency did not see the sharp contrast between past and present that General Hayden described.

"'We don't know everything that's going on today,' said David M. Barrett, a political scientist at Villanova University. 'But it seems to me there's already enough evidence to conclude that things are not so different today.'"

Where's Osama?

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Jonathan S. Landay writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "While the U.S. presses its war against insurgents linked to al Qaida in Iraq, Osama bin Laden's group is recruiting, regrouping and rebuilding in a new sanctuary along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, senior U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials said.

"The threat from the radical Islamic enclave in Waziristan is more dangerous than that from Iraq, which President Bush and his aides call the 'central front' of the war on terrorism, said some current and former U.S. officials and experts. Bin Laden himself is believed to be hiding in the region, guiding a new generation of lieutenants and inspiring allied extremist groups in Iraq and other parts of the world."

Live Online

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I'm Live Online today at 1 p.m. ET. Come join the conversation.

Late Night Humor

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Samantha Bee tells Jon Stewart that even if Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy hadn't sided with the conservatives in major decisions this term, the liberals would not have won.

"If Kennedy were to rule on the liberal side, Justice Cheney would then cast the tie-making vote," she tells Stewart. "The vice president is not only in both and neither of the executive and legislative branches, he's also a member of the Supreme Court."

Cartoon Watch

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Tony Auth and Stuart Carlson on Cheney; Ann Telnaes on the poodle.