Brian J. Doyle, DHS Deputy Press Secretary, has been “charged with trying to ‘seduce’ a 14-year-old…girl over the Internet.”

UPDATE: Further details here: “On many occasions, Doyle instructed the victim, whom he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, to perform a sexual act while thinking of him, and described explicit and perverse sexual acts he wished to have with her, in addition to sending her numerous obscene .mpg files (digital movies). … He attempted to seduce the girl during their online chats, encouraging her to purchase a web cam so that she could send graphic images of herself to him.”

“It’s too bad, I think. DeLay was an effective leader, albeit too liberal in recent years. It’s possible, of course, that he did something wrong along the way. But there is no evidence of that in the public domain…”

Watch it:

In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets all across the nation to protest right-wing immigration proposals. As Media Matters has documented, the fact that some demonstrators carry the Mexican flag has elicited the ire of conservative pundits. For example, Robert Novak has said:

I am no hard-liner on immigration who wants to expel 11 million illegal immigrants, but flags are a symbol of national identity. The student brandishing the Mexican flag signals divided loyalty or perhaps loyalty to a foreign power.

But President Bush himself has publicly brandished the Mexican flag. ThinkProgress has obtained a copy of a five-minute ad that the 2004 Bush campaign distributed to Hispanic supporters. In the ad, Bush can be seen waving a Mexican flag while embracing a young girl. (Watch the full ad HERE.)

What Novak and others fail to understand is that carrying the flag is not a sign of divided loyalty but a demonstration of an American value — understanding and appreciating immigrant culture.

More at DailyKos and Crooks & Liars.

In her farewell note to Interior Department staff, Secretary Gail Norton waxed poetic about the Gwich’in people who live just south of the Arctic Circle:

America is blessed by its cultural complexity. … I was struck by a statement made by a Gwichin elder in Arctic Village, Alaska. Her people live a subsistence lifestyle, relying mainly on migrating caribou. She said she wanted her grandchildren a thousand years from now to live the same way.

But Norton wasn’t nearly as respectful when the Gwich’in were standing in the way of her drilling plans. Norton was angry that the Gwich’in did not support the Bush administration’s plan for drilling in the Arctic. Shortly after visiting a Gwich’in village in 2001, she gave a speech that said the Gwich’ins were making life harder for “children throughout America”:

If the group’s goal is to continue their subsistence lifestyle for generations, that is certainly their choice. … But that choice also impacts others. The children throughout America, their lives will be affected by these decisions as well whether they will have heat for their homes, whether they will have jobs in a prosperous economy.

Norton’s farewell letter is clearly an effort to cast herself in a favorable light, but the facts of her tenure remain clear: she was the “administration’s biggest advocate for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska’s North Slope to oil drilling.” And she didn’t let anyone slow her down.

Think Progress has the full text of Norton’s letter HERE.

A thought experiment.

UPDATE: Billmon has more.

Neoconservative commentator Daniel Pipes was among the most fervent cheerleaders for the Iraq war. In essays and speeches, Pipes consistently predicted the “war in Iraq will lead to a reduction in terrorism” and the spread of regional democracy. (For this, Bush rewarded Pipes with a controversial recess appointment to the U.S. Institute for Peace.)

Now — three years, $300 billion, 2,300+ U.S. lives, and one anarchic civil war later — Pipes has learned an important lesson.

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them — to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They’ve more or less written us out of the picture.

To be fair, in Pipes’ world view, this does make some sense. Iraqis should be gracious for what’s happened in their country, since it’s been such a “success.”

Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.

“[Ohio] Secretary of State Ken Blackwell made an embarrassing announcement Monday: He accidentally bought stock in Diebold Inc., a voting machine maker that benefited from decisions made by his office,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro (R) is calling for an investigation.

On an interview this morning on Fox News Radio’s Tony Snow Show, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) revealed a plan to have the Texas legislature oust district attorney Ronnie Earle, the prosecutor who charged DeLay with money laundering:

Transcript:

SNOW: Okay, so at this point, you know — are you willing to let bygones be bygones?

DELAY: Absolutely not. Texas should not allow a district attorney from Travis County have this kind of power. And they can take his power away from him because there was the Texas legislature that gave him this power. And I think that will happen in the next session of the Texas legislature.

SNOW: Oh, really?

DELAY: Yes.

DeLay sounds like someone who is really confident of his ability to win on the merits in a court of law.

In his campaign to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader, Rep. John Boehner painted himself as a break from the past and a force for real reform:

WALLACE: OK. Congressman Shadegg, who just entered the race, and we’re about to hear from, says that neither you nor Roy Blunt represent a clean break from the scandals of the past. How do you respond?

BOEHNER: I’ve got a long record of real reform in Congress, and I think I can lead the effort to bring about the kind of reforms the American people are expecting from Congress.

But today Boehner showed his true colors, through a gushing ode to the criminally-indicted retiring Rep. Tom DeLay:

The country owes Tom a great debt of gratitude for helping lead America in a new direction — a direction outlined in the Contract with America that saw balanced budgets, historic welfare reforms, lower taxes, regulatory relief, and a renewed respect for the sanctity of life.

He has served our nation with integrity and honor, and I’m honored to call him my colleague and friend.

DeLay may be gone soon, but his House stands strong.