memeorandum: Unaccountable Musharraf Aid Spent Unaccountably (Spencer Ackerman/TPMmuckraker)

3:45 PM ET, December 24, 2007

Top Items:

Whitewash — The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget. — In his new book, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement …

Discussion: The Jawa Report, Booman Tribune, Blue Crab Boulevard, Marginal Revolution, Liberty Street and Macsmind

Matthew Yglesias:

Wrong on Race? — Tyler Cowen describes Bruce Bartlett's new book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past as “incendiary." — If this overview in The Wall Street Journal reflects the content, though, it seems fairly banal. As everyone with any awareness of American political history knows …

Discussion: The Newshoggers

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

State of the Unions — Once upon a time, back when America had a strong middle class, it also had a strong union movement. — These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated good wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often ended up being matched even by nonunion employers.

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias, The New Republic, Publius Endures, Open Left, Taylor Marsh, Norwegianity, NO QUARTER, Corrente and TPM Election Central

Jay Newton-Small / Time:

How Clinton Lost Her Invincibility — When Hillary Clinton launched her campaign nearly a year ago, the media buzz deemed it near impossible for the likes of Barack Obama and John Edwards to overcome her daunting campaign machine. The endorsements, the money, and the cream …

Discussion: Blue Crab Boulevard and The Heretik

Sasha Issenberg / Boston Globe:
In shifting race, Edwards aims for the gut

Discussion: Washington Post

Patrick Healy / New York Times:
Clinton Sums It Up for Viewers in 2 States

Discussion: The Politico

Michael D. Shear / Washington Post:

Romney Strategy in Peril With Huckabee's Ascent — Bid for Early States Appears in Jeopardy — DES MOINES — A year ago, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney gathered his campaign team for the first time at his suburban Boston home. There were PowerPoint presentations, and Ann Romney made sandwiches.

Discussion: TBogg, New York Observer, USA Today, The Caucus, PoliGazette, Macsmind, PBD and Los Angeles Times

Jack Kelly / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Thompson the tortoise

Discussion: Political Machine and BobKrumm.com

Maeve Reston / Los Angeles Times:
Romney's lead slipping in N.H. too

Discussion: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Matthew Yglesias and Political Machine

Yitzhak Benhorin / Ynetnews:

US report: Israel would weather nuclear war with Iran — Study compiled by US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), headed by a former Pentagon analyst, explores several hypothetical scenarios for unconventional warfare in our region. Authors find 'Israel's residents and economy could weather nuclear war with Iran'

Discussion: Blue Crab Boulevard, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers and Wonkette

Elie Leshem / Jerusalem Post:
‘Israel could survive nuclear war’

Discussion: The Newshoggers, Israel Matzav, Roger L. Simon and PoliGazette

Peter Wehner / Washington Post:

Huckabee's Co-Pilot — Some of us — in my case, a political conservative and evangelical Christian — are getting a queasy feeling when it comes to the presidential campaign of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and much of it has to do with his use of faith in this political campaign.

Discussion: Whiskey Fire, Balloon Juice, The Carpetbagger Report, All Spin Zone, Booman Tribune and INSTAPUTZ

T.W. Farnam / Wall Street Journal:

A Web Troll's Toll on the Clinton Campaign — FORT MITCHELL, Ky. — In Norse mythology, trolls steal babies and leave their own shape-shifting offspring behind. On the Internet, they just steal attention. — As candidates increasingly use the Internet to build political bridges …

Discussion: Liberal Values

Spencer Ackerman / TPMmuckraker:

Unaccountable Musharraf Aid Spent Unaccountably — Stop the presses! When the U.S. gave Pervez Musharraf a dumptruck full of cash after 9/11 — $10.58 billion and counting, mostly in untraceable cash transfers — it didn't exactly care how he spent it, as long as he was sufficiently bought off as a U.S. ally for the war on terror.

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, Matthew Yglesias, The Carpetbagger Report and The Seminal

Edwin Chen / Bloomberg:

Bush Seeks to Restore Tattered U.S. Image With Heavy '08 Travel — Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush's diplomatic passport will acquire a slew of new country stamps during his final year in office as he tries to rebuild the U.S.'s international standing and create a foreign-policy legacy beyond Iraq.

Discussion: Think Progress, Shakespeare's Sister, Booman Tribune and Wonkette

Jesse Wendel / Group News Blog:

The More Things Change... Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand Trashed At Christmas — For Being Pregnant — First term Congresswoman Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY20), in a highly-vulnerable district in New York's Hudson Valley, is being attacked, not for her politics, not for her stand against the Iraq war …

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns and Money

Multi-National Force:

Sunni, Shia March Together in Baghdad for Peace … BAGHDAD — Approximately 1,000 Iraqi citizens, of both Shia and Sunni religions, joined together on the sectarian fault line in Rawaniyah, the Karkh District of Baghdad, to march with one another in what they called a “Peace March”, Dec. 19.

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, The Jawa Report, The Strata-Sphere and Gateway Pundit

Gateway Pundit: Iraqi Sunni and Shia Join In Historic Peace March in Baghdad!

Robert D. Novak / Washington Post:

Subverting Bush at Langley — Outrage over the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes is but one element of the distress Republican intelligence watchdogs in Congress feel about the agency. “It is acting as though it is autonomous, not accountable to anyone,” Rep. Peter Hoekstra …

Discussion: The Mahablog, Ray Robison and NO QUARTER

The Corner:

Atheist Demographics — Let's see ... 3 plus 2 plus 1 plus zero is, er, 6; and 6 divided by 4 is ... 2, right? Well, to one significant digit. — Sorry about that. A little too much Christmas spirit. I really should stay away from applied. The correct TFR for our Four Horsemen …

Discussion: Vox Popoli

Josh Patashnik / The New Republic:

Palestinian Collaborators Then and Now — I've just finished a truly intriguing book. It is called Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 and is the product of what is clearly a daring mind, that is the mind of Hillel Cohen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Discussion: Israel Matzav and Elder of Ziyon

Daily Mail:

Hate cleric Omar Bakri calls for ‘ban’ on Christmas — ‘Christmas Day would be ideal for terror attack’, he says — Hate preacher Omar Bakri, who is barred from Britain, is calling on Brits to boycott Christmas. — Using the internet to post a rant against the festive season …