A White House official shares his glee that the raid on suspected terrorists in London “would yield political gains.”

White House officials and surrogates have fanned out in a coordinated Rovian campaign to smear their opponents as “defeatists” and “cut-and-runners.” In a mass email yesterday, former Rove deputy Ken Mehlman turned his guns on Rep. John Murtha:

The message from Connecticut is clear, and Ned Lamont isn’t alone. He is joined by Rep. John Murtha…who claims America is more dangerous than Iran and North Korea.

Mehlman is referencing a 6/25/06 story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which reported that Murtha said he believed the “American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran.”

Three days later, the paper retracted the report. Murtha was actually citing an international public opinion poll, not expressing his own views. But why let facts get in the way of a perfectly good smear?

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to regulate public disclosure of national security information,” a federal court has ruled that “even private citizens who do not hold security clearances can be prosecuted for unauthorized receipt and disclosure of classified information.” Under this interpretation, for example, the reporters who leaked the classified report on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib “could apparently be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.”

Our post yesterday criticizing Bonner Cohen for spreading misinformation on global warming on C-SPAN has rubbed some folks the wrong way.

First, the National Center for Public Policy Research accuses us of “libel” for suggesting that Cohen receives funding from the fossil fuel industry.

That’s interesting. Cohen was asked yesterday who funds the National Center for Public Policy Research and, after some prodding, he acknowledged that it receives funding from the fossil fuel industry. Watch it:

NCPPR and Cohen emphasize that most of their money comes from “individual donations.” They don’t mention how many of those individuals are also connected to the fossil fuel industry.

Another group that employs Cohen, the Capital Research Center, is mad that we didn’t attack them instead:

So, Think Progress, if you’re reading this, please direct your venom regarding Cohen’s masterful, exhaustively documented expose of the environmentalist movement to the Capital Research Center in the future. We have more than enough intellectual firepower to cut through your irrational emotion-driven temper tantrums.

We accept your offer. Please use your “intellectual firepower” to substantiate Bonner’s claim that the “vast majority” of climatologists are “agnostic” on the existence of global warming. According to Bonner, that would mean they are undecided on the question of whether “there is a causal relationship between emissions of greenhouse gases and the climate.”

Hundreds of climatologists have agreed that global warming is real through the IPCC process — so it better be a pretty long list. We’re waiting.

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believe Muslims are loyal to the U.S., a Gallup poll shows. “Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D. That same number admit that they do hold some ‘prejudice’ against Muslims.”

ABC News has updated its report from yesterday: “Dan Gerstein called from the Lieberman campaign to say the…account from another Lieberman adviser is not accurate. While confirming that Rove called Lieberman, he added: ‘Rove made a personal call, no help was offered, and we are not interested regardless.’ A senior White House official also says that the account is ‘not accurate.’”

Upset that Justice Scalia rejected his appeal to get off the Texas ballot, Tom DeLay told the National Review’s Byron York: “You can always count on the judiciary to make stupid rulings. … Not only stupid, but dangerous.”

Without affirmative action she “would not have a job that didn’t involve wearing a paper hat.”