It often seems there are few things agreed on when it comes to politics. But this year - whether it be the historical support Barack Obama has received on the campaign trail, the distance John McCain is trying to put between himself and President Bush on many issues to convince us a vote for him is not a vote for "more of the same," or the ousting of many congressional incumbent Republicans around the country - I think we can all agree that "CHANGE" is a good a theme as any in this year's elections.

So if any of you Democratic or Republican convention planners need a good theme song this year, I've got one for you: "It's Your Life" by 23-year-old Francesca Battistelli.

Battistelli, a Native New Yorker who now lives in Nashville, is like a breath of fresh air amid a political process becoming more filled with rancor every day. "It's Your Life" was influenced, in part, by the importance of this year's election and the need for everyone to get up and get involved in changing their own lives and the state of our country. She has a debut performance in New York City Tuesday, July 8. Details after the jump.

Here's what Battistelli tells Political Machine:

"Voting is so important, and it distinguishes our country from others in the world where so many people don't have a voice. It's a way to be heard and contribute to creating a better future on a local and national level.

File this one under the category of "Things That Make You Go 'Hmmmmm.'"

The Washington Post has a story today about a former CIA operative who claims he tried to warn the agency about bad intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs and who now says CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.

The onetime undercover agent who worked for the agency for 22 years has filed a motion in federal court asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time. He filed a lawsuit in 2004 alleging the CIA fired him for fighting senior bosses to file reports that went against conventional wisdom about WMD in the Middle East.

"On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at all," the former operative's attorney, Roy Krieger, told the Post.

The Post says the former operative, a Middle East native and fluent speaker of both Farsi and Arabic, recruited an informant who revealed secret evidence that Tehran had halted its research into designing and building a nuke. But attempts to file that information were "thwarted by CIA employees," according to court papers. Later he was told to "remove himself from any further handling" of the informant, the Post notes. The operative later was the subject of two internal investigations involving alleged sexual relations with an informant and financial improprieties. His lawyer said in court papers those probes were a "pretext to discredit."

"It would be wrong to suggest that agency managers direct their officers to falsify the intelligence they collect or to suppress it for political reasons," a CIA spokesman told the Post. "That's not our policy. That's not what we're about."

Not only is the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan (remember Afghanistan?) flourishing after almost seven years of U.S.-led fighting there, but insurgents probably will accelerate their attacks and expand into new regions of the country pretty soon.

That's the cheery news from the Defense Department report released late last week.

You can read the report here. The American Forces Press Services puts an unsurprisingly more optimistic spin on it. Here's a quick overview of what the "Report on Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan" for Congress found:

-The Afghanistan National Police (ANP) are improving, although at a slower pace than the Afghan National Army (ANA). It's hampered by lack of reform, corruption, insufficient U.S. military trainers and advisers, "and lack of unity of effort within the international community."

-"The Taliban regrouped after its fall from power and have coalesced into a resilient insurgency. It now poses a challenge to the Afghan Government's authority in some rural areas."

A New Yorker magazine article out today, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources, says Congress late last year agreed to a request from President Bush to fund up to $400 million for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran to destabilize the country's religious leadership and gather intel about its suspected nuclear-weapons program.

The ops were described in a highly-classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush.

While clandestine operations against Iran aren't new, the New Yorker says the scale and scope of the operations, which involve the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded. The magazine says some Finding details are sketchy, and some congressional leaders are questioning what exactly they agreed to.

Covert intel operations Findings must be disclosed to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of the intelligence committees, so money can be shuffled around as needed. The part of this story that cries hypocrisy is that it says even though some lawmakers were troubled by parts of the Finding, the money was still approved. The article notes:

Some members of the Democratic leadership-Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections-were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party's presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

"It's the Democrats [leaders] in Congress who basically looked the other way and said, 'take the money and run' - they did not stop this money," Hersh told CNN last night. Video is below, more after the jump.

There's a Democratic National Convention delegate from Wisconsin who has her fellow Dems in a tizzy.

Debra Bartoshevich, who pledged to back Hillary Rodham Clinton, is defending herself from an attempt by Wisconsin Democrats to take away her credentials because of her past statement that she would vote for John McCain if Clinton wasn't the nominee. She recently was quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as saying she would vote for the McCain in November if the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama.

"Keeping national delegate status is very important to me," Bartoshevich told the AP. "I believe that Hillary is the better candidate of all of them."

She told the Sentinel she felt Clinton was being treated unfairly and she questioned Obama's experience. She also signed up with "Citizens for McCain," after her Iraq war veteran sister egged her on.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed a formal credentials challenge Wednesday against the emergency room nurse and mother of two from Racine County. The Sentinel notes that in its challenge, the state party argued that Bartoshevich "embarrassed" them in the media with her decision, and:

• Violated party rules in expressing support for the other party's presumptive nominee.

• Violated party rules requiring that delegates be "bona fide Democrats who are faithful to the interests, welfare and success of the Democratic Party of the United States."

• Failed to honor a pledge that delegates sign stating their intent to vote for the party's presidential ticket in the fall.

A House Judiciary subcommittee is raking Bush administration lawyers over the coals to get at exactly what role they played in crafting policy on how to interrogate of terror detainees, and whether the president of the United States ever has the authority to, in the name of national defense, say - bury a detainee alive.

Members of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, particularly the Democratic ones, are frustrated with the lack of straightforward answers coming out of the mouths of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington - who is believed to have advocated the use of nearly unlimited authority by the executive branch in times of conflict - and John Yoo, the former administration lawyer turned law professor. Today's hearing is the last in a series of 3 held by the panel on the topic.

Congress is trying to get answers, in part, about a March 2003 memo in which the Justice Department memo gave military interrogators broad authority - similar to powers the CIA was given - to use extreme interrogation techniques and argued that wartime powers mostly exempted interrogators from laws banning such treatment. The 2003 81-page opinion was written by Yoo, then the second-ranking official at the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ. The CIA memo from August 2002, also written by Yoo, is also known as the "Bybee memo."

After the jump are some highlights, some of which I paraphrased.

Eight campaign watchdog groups today called on John McCain and Barack Obama to disclose more information on big-time fundraisers who "bundle" campaign contributions for the candidates.

They also want the goods on small donors, particularly because Obama has chosen to opt out of roughly $84 million in public money and is banking on his vast small donor pool that has helped his campaign make fundraising history. McCain's is still raising private money until the GOP's nominating convention, the point at which he is expected to opt into the public finance system.

Bundlers play a key role in fundraising, because they are able to raise - and donate - amounts of money well over what they're legally allowed to contribute on their own.

The Campaign Finance Institute, Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, Democracy 21, League of Women Voters of the United States, Public Citizen, Sunlight Foundation and U.S. PIRG, all sent letters to the candidates.

There's currently no requirement that campaigns divulge specifics about their bundlers, who are, more often than not, corporate executives, lobbyists, hedge fund managers or just plain rich people. There's always speculation as to how much these bundlers "own" the candidates.

Another Republican has been ousted from Capitol Hill - although it doesn't appear this one got spanked for the same (anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war) reasons other GOP lawmakers around the country have this year. He's the third House incumbent to lose a primary this year.

U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, a conservative lawmaker from Utah, lost his bid for a seventh term yesterday in primary because, essentially, he doesn't appear to be conservative enough for the state's 3rd District. He was beaten by newbie politico Jason Chaffetz, a former Brigham Young University football player who served as chief of staff for popular Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman. Cannon received 40% of the vote, while his opponent won 60%.

"We rocked the vote here in Utah and we rocked the Republican Party," Chaffetz told about 175 supporters gathered to celebrate the victory, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. "I think we've been given a mandate to return the Republican Party to its core conservative principles."

Even though Cannon is considered a strong conservative, Chaffetz blasted him on spending, energy, and immigration, in particular. AP notes that in 2003, Cannon sponsored a bill that would have allowed states to charge in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants, and that instead of favoring tossing all illegal workers out of the country, he supported a guest-worker program.

If you're considered a "wacko," a "wack job," or a liberal, the Justice Department in 2006 likely had no interest in you working at the agency.

The Justice Department's inspector general today released a report that found that the DOJ, under President Bush, inappropriately injected politics into hiring programs. Problems were found in hiring practices during 2002 - when John Ashcroft was attorney general - and in 2006, under Alberto Gonzales. 2006 was apparently full of many more flagrant violations of the law and department policy.

"We found that in 2006 the Screening Committee inappropriately used political and ideological considerations to deselect many candidates," the report states.

The AP has a quick hit on the report, which said members of a screening committee were asked to weed out "wackos" and ideological "extremists" trying to get accepted into a competitive honors program for entry-level attorneys or as summer interns. The committee rejected applicants with liberal or Democratic affiliations at a much higher rate than those with Republican, conservative or politically neutral backgrounds. AP notes that one candidate, a top Harvard student fluent in Arabic, was put in a "questionable" category evidently because of his membership in the Council on American Islamic Relations.

This only adds fuel to the fire still blazing over the U.S. attorney firings, for which several officials, including Gonzales, are still under investigation.

Some juicy highlights of inappropriateness I picked out of the report after the jump.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) thinks the U.S. embassy in Albania may have helped an indicted weapons dealer hide the Chinese origin of ammunition sent to Afghanistan, and that the embassy tried to keep information about the ammunition from Congress.

Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, today sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying:

"The Oversight Committee has received information that the U.S. ambassador to Albania held a late-night meeting with the Albanian Defense Minister at which the ambassador approved removing evidence of the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition being shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a U.S. contractor."

Here's what the chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the embassy, Major Larry Harrison, told the committee on June 9:

-Ambassador John Withers and top aides (as well as Harrison) met with the Albanian defense minister on Nov. 19, 2007, to discuss how to respond to a NY Times request to visit a site in Albania where U.S. arms contractor AEY was removing Chinese ammunition from its original packaging before sending it to Afghanistan

-the defense minister then ordered his top general to remove all evidence of Chinese packaging before the next day's inspection, to "alleviate the suspicion of wrongdoing."

-he felt "very uncomfortable" with the decision to remove the Chinese Markings, since AEY was under investigation for illegal arms trafficking involving Chinese ammunition.