memeorandum: Target the pork — Earmarks are sneaking back into Congress' spending bills. (Los Angeles Times)

1:00 PM ET, July 12, 2007

Top Items:

Initial Benchmark Assessment Report — This report to Congress is submitted consistent with Section 1314 of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 (Public Law 110-28) (the "Act"). It includes an assessment …

Discussion: Outside The Beltway, Agence France Presse, The Corner, michellemalkin.com, Taylor Marsh, Gateway Pundit, Guardian, USA Today, MoJoBlog and TIME: Swampland

Sridhar Pappu / Washington Post:

A Bush Aide's Long Road From The White House — On a snowy evening in December 1998, Sara M. Taylor, the daughter of a former pipe fitter at a John Deere plant in Iowa, came to a meeting at the Capital Hilton. Washington had grown dark and quiet, and the hotel restaurant was empty …

Discussion: TalkLeft, PoliBlog (TM), Corrente, Balkinization, Sister Toldjah, Townhall.com and The Heretik

New York Times:

Bush to Declare Gains in Iraq on Some Fronts — The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.

Discussion: Washington Post, Pottersville, Jules Crittenden, The Politico, The Heretik, Air America Radio, The Democratic Daily, Rising Hegemon and Daily Kos

Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:

IRAQ UPDATE....Non-insane conservative James Joyner has read the White House's latest assessment of the war in Iraq and is distinctly unimpressed: … Click the link if you, too, want to be fair. I'm not in the mood. — Actually, I think things are considerably worse than James suggests.

Discussion: Eschaton

Washington Post:
White House Gives Iraq Mixed Marks in Report

Discussion: Prairie Weather

Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Against Claims of Executive Privilege, a Committee Comes Up Dry

Discussion: QandO, TPMCafe blogs and TPMmuckraker

Dahlia Lithwick / Slate:
Rocking the Hard Place

Discussion: New York Times, TPMmuckraker, Crooks and Liars, Los Angeles Times and The Carpetbagger Report

Washington Post:

U.S. Warns Of Stronger Al-Qaeda — Administration Report Cites Havens in Pakistan — Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks …

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, The Strata-Sphere, The Heretik, Happy Furry Puppy Story …, Kiko's House, AMERICAblog, Los Angeles Times and ProfessorBainbridge.com ®

Associated Press:
Al-Qaida has rebuilt, U.S. intel warns

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Reaction, MoJoBlog, ThreatsWatch, Empire Burlesque, Scrutiny Hooligans, Michael P.F. van der Galiën, Middle Earth Journal and Eschaton

Glenn Sulmasy / Providence Journal: Balancing needs of law and war

The Atlantic Online:
All News Is Good News

Discussion: Eschaton, The Carpetbagger Report, Obsidian Wings, Associated Press and Brendan Nyhan

Chicago Tribune:
Terror threat downplayed

Discussion: CNN Political Ticker and CNN

Bob Woodward / Washington Post:

CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible' — Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House. — For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give …

Discussion: Associated Press, The Atlantic Online, Think Progress, Hot Air, The Moderate Voice, Jules Crittenden, Brilliant at Breakfast, Norwegianity, Rising Hegemon, Macsmind and AMERICAblog

David Ignatius / Washington Post:

A Consensus Waiting to Happen — The last time I remember Ambassador Ryan Crocker warning about a possible bloodbath, it was in September 1982 as the Sabra-Shatila massacre was taking place in Beirut. So when Crocker tells the New York Times that a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could produce …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, The Carpetbagger Report, If I Ran the Zoo, Ezra Klein and Washington Monthly

Jim Henley / Unqualified Offerings:
Slop Will Eat Itself

Discussion: Total Information Awareness, Lawyers, Guns and Money, Daily Kos and Middle Earth Journal

Orlando Sentinel:

Rep. Bob Allen arrested on sex charge — TITUSVILLE - State Rep. Bob Allen was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a local park after offering to perform a sex act on an undercover officer in exchange for $20, police said. — Allen, R-Merritt Island, was booked into the Brevard County jail …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Midtopia, Tallahassee Democrat, Associated Press, The Gun Toting Liberal™, Bark Bark Woof Woof, Watching Those We Chose, Shakesville, Unqualified Offerings and Suburban Guerrilla

John Kennedy / Orlando Sentinel:
Rep. Bob Allen Arrested on Sex Charge

Discussion: The Atlantic Online and TIME: Swampland

James Hohmann / Dallas Morning News:

Nobel laureate calls for removal of Bush — Irish peace activist's speech at Dallas event gets standing ovation — Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached. — In a keynote speech at the International Women's Peace Conference …

Discussion: michellemalkin.com, NewsBusters.org, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs and Blue Crab Boulevard

New York Times:

McCain Call Raises an Ethics Question — About 3 p.m. Tuesday, Senator John McCain ducked off the Senate floor, entered the Republican cloakroom and took out his mobile phone. Just hours after accepting the resignation of his two top campaign aides, he was making a conference call …

Discussion: Washington Post, The Politico, The Carpetbagger Report, Daily Kos, Don Surber, TIME, The American Mind, Outside The Beltway, WorkingForChange, Reason Magazine and RADAR

Washington Post:

Wishful Thinking on Iraq — IT SEEMS like just weeks ago, because it was, that Congress approved funding for the war in Iraq and instructed Gen. David H. Petraeus to report back on the war's progress in September. Now, for reasons having more to do with American politics than with Iraqi reality, September isn't soon enough.

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, Heading Right, TigerHawk and New Pairodimes

Eric Lipton / New York Times:

A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in U.S. Security — Undercover Congressional investigators set up a bogus company and obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March that would have allowed them to buy the radioactive materials needed for a so-called dirty bomb.

Discussion: Think Progress, Brilliant at Breakfast, Reason Magazine and Obsidian Wings

Jules Crittenden:

Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant? — Right now, all the talk in DC is whether there has been any progress in Iraq. No one can wait till September. They need to know now. Primarily, it appears, because they need to kill the war for their own domestic political reasons before it kills them.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, NewsBusters.org, If I Ran the Zoo, Confederate Yankee and Michael Yon

Calvin Woodward / Associated Press:

Nixon wanted to be seen as 'nicey-nice' — WASHINGTON - President Nixon and his 1972 re-election campaign tried to tie Democrats to the mob, gay liberation and even slavery, according to newly released papers and tapes betraying bare-knuckle tactics from the dawn of the Watergate scandal.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice and Attytood

Joel Mowbray / Washington Times:

CAIR's duplicitous ways — While the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been busy attacking syndicated columnist Cal Thomas recently for supposedly "Islamophobic" comments, the media-hungry group did not condemn the foiled terrorist plots in London or the successful one in Glasgow, Scotland.

Discussion: Power Line