Battered Blair Bows Out

"Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin."

A new angle on Romney, from a "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace:

"Romney's wife, Ann, who converted to the Mormon Church before they were married, is also interviewed. When asked whether they broke the strict church rule against premarital sex, Romney says, 'No, I'm sorry, we do not get into those things,' but still managed to blurt out 'The answer is no,' before ending that line of questioning."

I predicted awhile back that Bush and the Democrats would paper over their differences on the war with some vague language about benchmarks, and now:

"President Bush offered his first public concession to try to resolve the impasse over Iraq war spending today, as he confronted new pressure from his own party over the conflict and House approval of a plan that would provide money for combat operations only through midsummer," says the New York Times.

The quote: "It makes sense to have benchmarks as a part of our discussion on how to go forward."

Of course, if those benchmarks don't include any sanctions for failure, how much do they really mean?

How specific should we expect the candidates to be at this stage of the game? The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn wants more rather than less:

"Virtually any Democratic candidate proposing universal coverage can expect such treatment. But Clinton and Obama come into the contest with additional liabilities. As Clinton herself says, she has the scars from the fight to create universal coverage in 1994. (Whether she deserves those scars is another story.) And she's still dogged by the perception that she's too liberal and uncompromising to be president. She's worked hard to dispel that image, but coming up with a firm set of principles on health care reform would surely invite accusations that she's back to her old and supposedly evil ways.

"Obama has a different problem. He has enjoyed a meteoric rise, but a lot of that success reflects his ability to speak in broad, inspiring terms about unity and shared purpose. A realistic health care plan is bound to upset at least some interest groups--and to create some losers, even among voters. In other words, it's bound to offend.

"These liabilities, however, are precisely why we need to hear more from Clinton and Obama--whatever the risks. The great reservation many liberals have about Clinton is whether her experience as First Lady has made her too gun-shy--whether she's too stuck in the mindset of the late-'90s, when triangulation was necessary for political survival, to stretch the boundaries of debate enough to make universal coverage possible. The great doubt about Obama, meanwhile, is whether all that rhetoric about shared purpose and common ground precludes him from taking strong stands that, inevitably, provoke strong opposition.

"The question about both candidates, in other words, is whether they are willing to pick fights."

A very personal post from Time's Jay Carney, who apparently got plenty of reaction to his views on the Edwardses and cancer:

"I've known John and Elizabeth Edwards since I wrote about his Senate race nine years ago. I've always liked and admired them both. And, as I think was clear from a piece I wrote about Elizabeth in 2004, I'm among those who consider Mrs. Edwards every bit her husband's equal, and in some cases his better, as a politician and public speaker. She is also incredibly warm and real.

"I had already spoken briefly to Senator Edwards last night when, during a break in the dinner, Ana [Marie Cox] pulled me into a conversation with Mrs. Edwards. She was, as Ana said, very gracious. She told me she had been upset by what I'd written about their decision to keep campaigning, despite the recurrence of her cancer, but she also said, as her husband has publicly, that she understood why people had different opinions about it. She joked about wanting to slug me, and (with encouragement from Tammy Haddad) balled up her fist and held it up to my chin, laughing as she did.

"A lot of readers disagreed with my article and posts about the Edwards' decision. Others, a minority, had reactions similar to mine. I've thought a lot about it since then. Contrary to what some readers suspect, I have a fair amount of experience with cancer in my family. My mother is a cancer survivor; my two grandmothers succumbed to it, one of them fairly young. My point was never that Elizabeth Edwards should go hide in a room and wait to die just because her cancer had returned. She has more than one option for living a full life. She and her husband chose to continue pursuing the White House. As I've said before but feel even more strongly after talking with Mrs. Edwards about her children last night, I do believe they made the right decision for themselves. At a personal level, that's all that matters. The politics of it will be what they will be."

The Chicago Sun-Times expands the role of journalism to include sushi fraud.

Attention, Imus-bashers: Opie & Anthony just did a routine about sexually assaulting Condi Rice.

"It's all in good fun, since she's a Republican," InstaPundit says with heavy sarcasm. "I predict nothing like an Imus moment here. Because black Republican women deserve it. They're traitors to their race and gender."