Call it a case of strange bedfellows. On Friday, Rudy Giuliani will take the stage at the NRA's annual convention and try to convince the organization he's their man. Meanwhile:

...even as the former New York mayor strives to burnish his Second Amendment credentials at the gathering in Washington, a panel of federal judges in his home town will be hearing arguments on the lawsuit that Giuliani filed seven years ago aimed at punishing the nation's manufacturers for violent crimes involving firearms.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on Giuliani's side on the issue of guns. In 1995, Rudy went on Charlie Rose and declared that the NRA goes,

"overboard. The extremists on the left and the extremists on the right have essentially the same tactic," he said, adding later that "the NRA's, in essence, defense of assault weapons, and their unwillingness to deal with some of the realities here that we face in our cities is a terrible, terrible mistake."

Amen. And I applaud America's Mayor for teaming up with then president, Bill Clinton, to push through the assault weapons ban. Clearly, tougher legislation is needed to close up all the loopholes. Let's see what proposals Giuliani puts forth in front of the NRA crowd.

Wow. Alan Greenspan's memoir is being previewed and George W. does not come out well. Remember, Greenspan is a life long Republican and a revered voice in financial circles. He was optimistic when his friends were elected.

When Bush and Cheney won the 2000 election, Greenspan writes, "I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets. . . . I was soon to see my old friends veer off to unexpected directions."

Here's what he's saying now about the Bush administration:

"Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences." The large, anticipated federal budget surpluses that were the basis for Bush's initial $1.35 trillion tax cut "were gone six to nine months after George W. Bush took office." So Bush's goals "were no longer entirely appropriate. He continued to pursue his presidential campaign promises nonetheless."

Smack down and he's only getting warmed up. Tell us how you really feel Alan.

By the end of last year, Greenspan writes with some bitterness, Washington was "harboring a dysfunctional government. ... Governance has become dangerously dysfunctional."

This from Alan Greenspan, never considered a radical. He worked with whoever was in office. He apparently appreciated Bill Clinton's ability to digest facts and face economic reality but pretty much says President Bush is the worst president ever. Now, I'm no Greenspan fan myself but we have found something to agree on here. The national debt has escalated faster than Republicans can send more brigades to the endless war. History will not be kind to this reckless cowboy and Greenspan is probably just the start. Worst President Ever, not the heroic cardboard cutout the Pretender sports.

The New Orleans Times Picayune is reporting today that a prostitute has come forward who claims she had a four-month sexual relationship with Republican Senator David Vitter back in 1999. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, paid for the woman to take a lie-detector test, which, Flynt says, the woman passed with flying colors.

Previously, Vitter denied having anything to do with hookers in the Big Easy, and he'll no doubt maintain that claim today after Flynt holds a Beverly Hills news conference with the prostitute, Wendy Yow Ellis:

During a phone interview Monday, Ellis said she met regularly with Vitter in the French Quarter aprartment and that he paid her through her pimp, Jonathan, whose last name she did not know. She said Vitter met her through the New Orleans Escort Service, not through the madam whose notorious Canal Street brothel was raided by federal agents in 2001. Although that madam, Jeanette Maier, claimed in interviews that Vitter patronized her brothel and favored a prostitute named Wendy...

Of course, it could just be a political hit. Vitter, who has already confessed to committing a "very serious sin" in using the services of D.C. madam Deborah Jeane Palfry, may have only ever visited escorts in the nation's capital, not in New Orleans. After all, Ms. Ellis stands to make a bit of money from this revelation. Yet, for enterprising reporters, if the allegations of a four-month entanglement are true, then there will be a leads to follow.

This is the last thing the Republican party needs at the moment (and if I had a dollar for every time I've said that over the past two years!). Let's say Larry Craig gets a judge to overturn his guilty plea, and a formal trial begins. Meanwhile, every gumshoe in New Orleans will set to work on Vitter.

Vitter and Craig, two men who chastised Bill Clinton for his indiscretion with Monica Lewinsky, bound together again. Good luck with that, boys.

If you're a fan of television talk shows, you may be noticing a trend this week. The airwaves are brimming with some familiar special guests: The Clintons. That would be five talk-show appearances in two days. Oprah, Ellen, David Letterman, Larry King, and Today. Bill Clinton is doing lots of heavy lifting for the campaign these days, and, let's face it, he's a pretty eye-catching guest. From the LA Times:

Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political strategist, said the Clintons were capitalizing on the public's fascination with them, using their appeal to reach millions of viewers largely on their own terms.

"They are still America's first family," he said. "They have lived a kind of serial program that has been on the air, without repeats, for nearly 20 years--and the American public intends to keep tuning in."

Unlike the Clintons, GOP candidate, Fred Thompson can be seen in syndication. And will also use the talk-show strategy to his advantage, opting for Jay Leno instead of tonight's Republican debate in New Hampshire.

Me, I prefer reality television that involves ingesting squirming insects, or, at the very least, a house full of back-stabbing co-eds. Hey, come to think of it, maybe that's not so different from politics, after all.

With the sixth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, I've been seeing some things that bother me. From articles saying we should essentially move on, as it were, to this disturbing story: ABC went through much heartache last year when they released the miniseries "The Path to 9/11," a docudrama about events leading up that fateful September day. The series laid a good amount of the blame at the feet of Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger and ignited a firestorm in the blogosphere and in Washington. In fact, the outcry was so vociferous that ABC actually toned down a scene in which Berger wavered over attacking a camp where Osama bin Laden was allegedly staying, thus allowing him to escape and laying waste to the Clinton line that we "almost" took the al-Qaida leader out.

Fast-forward to the present. On September 11, 2007, many new DVD's will become available including most ABC productions from last season. Mysteriously, The Path to 9/11 is not among them and no date has been set for release. The writer of the film sees some political shenanigans in play:

With no date for the release, questions are being raised about whether political pressure is behind its current status as a stalled or discarded DVD project. The reasons are murky, but the miniseries' writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, believes it's crystal clear: Powerful forces are out to protect Bill Clinton's presidential legacy and shield Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) from any potential collateral damage in her bid for the White House.

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries' many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that "if Hillary weren't running for president, this wouldn't be a problem."

The Clinton camp went insane when Sean Hannity got an uncut copy and played the scenes that were cut in the final film that aired.

OK, is it just me, or does anybody else see a pattern here? As Nixguy reported earlier, Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R) was arrested a little while back, and plead guilty to a charge of "disorderly conduct" in a Minneapolis airport men's room. In the process of being booked, Craig, like Florida Representative Bob Allen (R), tried to get special treatment by telling police who he was.

No, Craig didn't try to pull the old "I offered the officer money to provide him with oral sex because I was afraid of him because he was a scary black man" defense that Allen made famous, but he does claim there was a misunderstanding. Evidently, Craig didn't get that when he was pleading guilty, he was, in fact, admitting guilt, or something like that. The complaints of lewd behavior from the other men in the bathroom, well, it was all just a crazy mix-up.

Also strangely familiar is the senator's Ted Haggard-esque public hatred of all things homosexual. Americablog has dug up Craig's votes and found that the senator voted for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, against adding sexual orientation to the hate crimes act and prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation, and for prohibiting same sex marriage. You see, Craig prefers the furtive, encounter with a stranger, men's room variety of homosexuality. None of the commitment or rights, just the kinky sex. How's that for family values?

And like Louisiana's David Vitter (R), he of D.C. escort services fame, Craig was one of those who pounded the GOP drum against Bill Clinton's sexual behavior, calling the former president, among other things, a "naughty boy." And no, in case you're wondering, this was certainly not the first time that Craig has had such an encounter in a public bathroom. From today's Idaho Statesman:

Sen. Larry Craig, who in May told the Idaho Statesmen he had never engaged in homosexual acts, was arrested less than a month later by an undercover police officer who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him in an airport men's room. The arrest at a Minnesota airport prompted Craig to plead guilty to disorderly conduct earlier this month. His June 11 encounter with the officer was similar to an incident in a men's room in a Washington, D.C., rail station described by a Washington-area man to the Idaho Statesman. In that case, the man said he and Craig had sexual contact.

Oh to be gay, closeted, and Republican. Evidently, it's a heavy burden to carry.

I'm a firm believer that Bill Clinton got off way too easily when discussing the failures of pre-9/11 intelligence gathering and our lack of response when repeatedly provoked. Yes, we were attacked prior to Clinton entering office.

The kidnapping of our hostages in Iran and the Hezbollah attack in Beirut are but two glaring examples of pre-al-Qaida terror. The hostage taking was a nadir for our country and Jimmy Carter did not have the nerve or the military to respond. Ronald Reagan also did not respond to the attack that killed 240 Marines and others in Beirut, but at the time we were in the middle of a civil war and we had no idea which side was which and who our friends were and who were our enemies.

The attacks against our interests and military in the 1990's were a different story altogether. From Mogadishu to the first World Trade Center Bombing to he African embassy bombings to the Khobar Towers to finally a direct attack on a U.S. warship -- the USS Cole -- and still we did almost nothing. We said to Osama bin-Laden "attack, we won't respond" and he was emboldened enough to first allow planning for the Millenium bombings and the Bojinka plane bombings (both luckily stopped by heads-up policewomen) while funding the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.

This quote from the suntimes.com can't be anything other than a direct slam on Hillary Clinton:

At another stop, in Atlantic, Michelle said she travels with her husband in part "to model what it means to have family values," adding "if you can't run your own house, you can't run the White House." She didn't elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.

Ouch! It works on two levels as well. One is the standard slam on Bill Clinton's philandering and Hillary's enabling of that behavior, and the other is a direct question about why Bill and Hillary are hardly ever seen together.

If the speculation is that Barack Obama is really running for VP, this is a funny way to do it. Or Michelle Obama is not into the VP thing. I'm sure The Queen is not amused.

The rest of the article is your standard variety candidates wife puff piece.

UPDATE new and improved with context.

The first comment by David Knowles prompted me to go out and look at the Andrew Sullivan post, which led me here and it does seem as if the Sun Times is guilty of sensational quote mining. Full quote here, regarding the family values comment.

That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can'’t run your own house, you certainly can'’t run the White House. So, so we’'ve adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he'’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I’'m home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don'’t care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that’s why we’re doing this. We’re in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.

That's a lot better, but I will say that this whole area is deeply uncomfortable to the Clinton campaign and can be seen as an implicit (if nothing else) dig. But Michelle should probably get the benefit of the doubt.

National Review Online has a very interesting article today by S. T. Karnick, making the case for Mike Huckabee, stemming from his position as a governor.

Just consider the following: George W. Bush: Governor of Texas. Bill Clinton: Governor of Arkansas. Ronald Reagan, California; Jimmy Carter, Georgia; Franklin Roosevelt, New York; Calvin Coolidge, Massachusetts; Warren G. Harding (Lt. Governor of Ohio before serving as a U.S. Senator but missing over two thirds of the roll-call votes during his tenure and hence leaving little paper trail); Woodrow Wilson (New Jersey); William Howard Taft (governor-general of the Philippines); Theodore Roosevelt (New York). Governors win, and when it's a governor running against a U.S. senator or even vice president or president, the governor wins.

Senators who become president are those who run against other senators or ascend to the presidency after serving as vice president when a sitting president dies in office. The last senator to win the presidency without being the incumbent was John F. Kennedy in 1960, and it's almost a certainty that the close race against Richard Nixon - a former senator and vice president, not a governor - was stolen by pols in Illinois and Texas.

So, when we think about whom any party should nominate for president, it's always best to go after a governor.

And then goes on to say that Mike Huckabee is no worse off than Bill Clinton in the latter half of 1991 as far as name recognition goes.

And that's all true, but I would make the case that while the argument for Huckabee is compelling, that being the mayor of New York is more than equal to the task of a governor. By my count there are only ten states that have a higher population than New York City, and Arkansas is not one of them. By this measure of executive experience,Rudy Giuliani wins. Mitt Romney was also a governor as noted in the article, which quickly goes on to say that Romney isn't the guy for 2008.

Huckabee does have the right background, but he's going to need more than just the governor line on his resume.

There's a very interesting article this morning over at the Los Angeles Times, Clinton's first lady records locked up, referring to the plethora of Hillary Clinton-related documents archived at the Clinton Presidential Library.

Much of Hillary's campaign rhetoric is based on the fact that she has the most experience, and that she's "been there" before. At times during the campaign, Hillary even alludes back to Bill Clinton's pre-2002 description of her role in his administration were he to get elected: "two for the price of one." Since it's obvious that on most days she wants to give the impression that her husband's term was a co-presidency, records showing her involvement in Bill's administration should be a valuable tool in assessing if she'd be a competent president herself. But it looks as if the voters won't be seeing them, until at least after the election in 2008. Why? Because they could be embarrassing to her campaign.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her experience as a compelling reason voters should make her president, but nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years are locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady. Clinton's calendars, appointment logs and memos are stored at her husband's presidential library, in the custody of federal archivists who do not expect them to be released until after the 2008 presidential election.

Hidden in the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark. are boxes of documents that would shed some light on Hillary Clinton and her role in the two Clinton terms. From health care to impeachment, these are important documents as they'll show the decisions she made, the advice she gave and her thoughts about the daily events that shape a presidency. Hillary is making sure they don't see the light of day until after the 2008 election:

But even in the healthcare documents, at least 1,000 pages involving her work has been censored by archives staff because they include confidential advice and must be kept secret under a federal law called the Presidential Records Act. Political consultants said that if Hillary Clinton's records were made public, rivals would mine them for scraps of information that might rattle her campaign.

"Those files -- that's the mother lode of opposition research," said Ray McNally, a Republican political consultant in Sacramento. "Opposition researchers would be very hungry to see what's there." Robert Shrum, senior political strategist in Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, said: "In 2 million pieces of paper, would opposition researchers hope to find one where she wrote a memo saying, 'I wish I'd never gotten involved in healthcare?' Sure. That's what they'd love to find."

Among other things not involving health care, I would like to know her response (if any) to the attacks on the African embassies, the USS Cole and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. We know that Bill Clinton's response was tepid at best and led Osama bin Laden to believe that we didn't have the will to strike back. What was Hillary's advice in those situations?

Sen. Barack Obama has been criticized for his recent aggressive comments on Pakistan. A few months ago, he made another tactical error that may hurt him in 2008.

The Lantern, student voice of the Ohio State University, reported that "Barack Obama and Jon Stewart both declined OSU's invitation to speak at this year's (commencement) ceremony." The Buckeye crowd got former president Bill Clinton instead ... and Obama missed a chance to woo prospective Midwest voters.

Obama should have remembered the example set by President Bush in 2002. Dubya delivered the commencement address, making the necessary reference to the Buckeyes football team. "Today I had the honor of meeting Coach Jim Tressel," Dubya declared. "Most polite of him to share with me the really fine experience that the Buckeyes had up in Ann Arbor this year." Two years later, the Bush-Cheney ticket would win a key victory in Ohio (with its 20 electoral votes) over Kerry-Edwards.

Obama should figure out a way to get to Columbus, fast...

So the other day I was in the kitchen when I heard Al Gore's voice on our living-room TV. Curious, I went in to watch. Turns out it was a rerun of a 2006 "12 Days of Giveaways" episode of the Ellen DeGeneres show. Her guests: Kellie Pickler and a certain former vice president.

Were there any revealing signs from that interview that can be applied today? Gore sounded very definite about not running. "I don't think I'll ever do that again," he told Ellen. "I've kind of fallen out of love with politics."

As for Bill and Hillary Clinton, the power duo of the Democratic Party, Al Gore praised his former boss and didn't really address the then-prospect of a Hillary candidacy. "Do you think Hillary will run?" Ellen asked. "Uh, I don't know," Gore said. "I don't know." Ellen quickly made the mood more lighthearted, asking, "What about Tipper? I love her. I played Ping-Pong somewhere with your wife" and the Gores' daughter, Kristin.

Was there any bit of hope for anyone who wants Gore to run in 2008? The brains behind An Inconvenient Truth (the film would later receive an Oscar, at an awards show presided over by Ellen) said his goal is "to try to change people's minds about the climate crisis. Whoever is our next president, we need to make a shift or we're in trouble." So, if Gore finds the current crop of candidates to lack sufficient concern for the environment, perhaps he'll run?

It used to be that the next step for a general was a presidential run. The most famous examples, arguably, are Civil War commander Ulysses S. Grant and World War II leader Dwight D. Eisenhower.

More recently, though, military alumni have had less success in presidential campaigns. Colin Powell decided against it in 1995, while Wesley Clark's campaign couldn't overcome Sen. John Kerry in 2004. More successful veteran candidates, such as Kerry and Sen. John McCain, still haven't achieved the goal that came so easily to Grant and Ike.

This may show that Americans are as good at compartmentalizing as our politicians. We can admire a Kerry or a McCain for their military heroism, but this doesn't mean we automatically vote for them. Our most recent former president, Bill Clinton, and our current commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, are far from military heroes, and yet they got elected anyway. Perhaps that is an encouraging sign for a country often accused of being too pro-military.

Here's the thing about Louisiana Senator David Vitter: if he hadn't made a point of chastising Bill Clinton for his extramarital excursions, hadn't trumpeted himself as a strong proponent of "family values," and hadn't just as quickly tried to sweep all of his own contradictory behavior under the rug, then this would just be another story about a weak-willed man and the world's oldest profession.

But Vitter, like Clinton himself, now seems forever marked by the topic of infidelity. The conservative Republican, after all, replaced a man named Bob Livingston in the state legislature after Livingston himself resigned after revelations of his own affairs. Vitter was quick to compare Bill Clinton to Livingston, and suggest a similar course of action for the sitting president:

"I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess,"

Of course, the shoe is now on the other foot, and Vitter sees no reason at all that he should face the same consequences he once recommended. From yesterday's press conference:

"If continuing to believe in and acknowledge those values causes some to attack me because of my past failure, well, so be it," said Vitter, who does not come up for re-election until 2010. "I'm not going to answer the endless questions about it all over again and again and again. That might sell newspapers but it would not serve my family or my constituents well at all," he said.

In other words, get over it. Move on. True, Vitter's wife (who famously claimed she'd respond more like Lorena Bobbit than Hillary Clinton if she ever caught her husband cheating) seems to have forgiven the man and spared him the scissors, so perhaps voters should not hold the past against him, either. Then again, this continued pattern of falling smack into one's own family value trap -- as succinctly illustrated by the likes of Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Jimmy Swaggart, and the rest -- will never be brushed away so easily. When you make a career by picking up that righteous sword, you'd best be prepared to be cut now and again.