The U.S. trade deficit for 2005, an all-time record. “[P]erhaps the most important factor behind the swelling deficit last year was the rising cost of importing oil…”

George Bush says he doesn’t know Jack Abramoff. In an email, Jack Abramoff said the two met “nearly a dozen times,” shared jokes and talked about his family.

America Online is taking a poll: “Whose account of Bush and Abramoff’s ties seems more believable?” Over 100,000 people have voted. Here are the results so far:

Go vote. (HT: McManus/LA)

In December 2002, appearing on PBS’ NOW with Bill Moyers, McCain spoke enthusiastically about expanding public financing of elections, saying Arizona’s public financing law could “absolutely” be used as a model for the whole nation:

BILL MOYERS: Senator, in your home state of Arizona, a number of candidates recently were elected to office running with public funding, public financing. Would you support it? Would you endorse, what do you think about that experiment there?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: I think it’s good overall. I think it needs to, like any other new experiment, it needs to have some wrinkles taken out of it. But we had more people run for public office than any time in the history of our state, and that’s what it was all about. As I say, there’s some fixes that need to be made, but it was a new experiment, and overall I think was very successful and interestingly the ones who are running, you know what they’re telling me? They said, surprise, surprise, I spend my time talking to voters not to contributors.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think that could become a model for the nation as a whole?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Absolutely.

Now, he is refusing to even discuss public financing and attacking others for even considering it. From yesterday’s The Hill:

The public financing of campaigns does not have “” at least to this point “” the support of the Senate’s leading advocate for campaign-finance reform, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

McCain dismissed the proposal yesterday with a flat “no.”

… McCain said he did not understand the new fervor among Democrats for taxpayer-financed campaigns…

Hop aboard the straight talk express.

from CPAC 2006, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

New House Majority Leader John Boehner hires Tom DeLay’s communications director.

CNN’s Situation Room last night covered ThinkProgress and the Abramoff e-mail, highlighting its importance in telling a different story from the Bush administration’s spin.

CANDY CROWLEY, SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well Wolf, that’s the easy question. If it’s, do these e-mails tell a different story? The answer is most definitely yes.

Watch it:

Crowley also mentioned possible implications in the Abramoff investigation for the White House: “The federal probe has instead been focused on the actions of some members of Congress and their staffs, but there have been what the source called ‘interchanges’ between Abramoff and investigators about members of the Bush administration.”

Full transcript below: Read more

Today’s show is over, but you can still listen to the podcast. ThinkProgress Radio will be back next Friday.

ThinkProgress Radio debuted last week with a two-hour State of the Union wrap-up featuring John from AmericaBlog, ReddHedd from Firedoglake, Bill from Liberal Oasis and Sean-Paul from the Agonist.

ThinkProgress’ Judd, Faiz, and Nico and Sirius Radio’s Christy Harvey will be back on the air this morning at 11 AM ET to give the inside scoop about how they got the Abramoff emails (reported this morning in the Washington Post and the New York Times) and where the story goes from here.

Kevin Drum weighs in on American Progress’ new defense review, Restoring American Military Power.