K-Lo:

AWFUL POST[Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The reporter here in the Washington Post this morning seems to be insinuating that these staffers are a gay couple — but he doesn’t actually say so. If that is not the case, it’s outrageous to insinuate.

The three — chief of staff Scott Palmer, deputy chief of staff Mike Stokke and counsel Ted Van Der Meid — have formed a palace guard around Hastert (R-Ill.) for years, attaining great degrees of power and unusual autonomy to deal with matters of politics, policy and House operations. They are also remarkably close. Palmer and Stokke have been with Hastert for decades. They live together in a Capitol Hill townhouse and commute back to Illinois on weekends.

In all honesty, if she hadn’t mentioned it, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to read that as an “insinuation” that Palmer and Stokke are a gay couple. They’re roommates. It’s unusual for older people to have that sort of situation and, therefore, it seems like a sufficiently noteworthy fact to put in an article. And, yes, now that she points it out, I suppose one might think they were lovers. When my roommate and I lived in a two bedroom rowhouse, people sometimes mistook us for a gay couple. Not being bigots, we didn’t take that to be “outrageous to insinuate.” Rather, it was a misunderstanding. These things happen.

The Daily Mail has the exclusive:

The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq “soon” or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society.

In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair’s foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops “exacerbates the security problems” in Iraq.

may have been responsible for tipping off journalists to the agency’s secret rendition program. “He set me on the trail,” said reporter Stephen Grey.

“At least 135 federal employees, including a White House staff member and National Security Agency employees, bought bogus online college degrees from a diploma mill.”

David Kuo, the former second-in-command of President Bush’s Office on Faith-Based Initiatives, has a new book detailing how the office was “used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.”

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had an exclusive report on the book last night (watch the video), and part two of his report airs tonight at 8 PM ET.

ThinkProgress has obtained an excerpt from the book, set shortly after Bush’s 2001 inauguration:

Every other White House office was up and running. The faith-based initiative still operated out of the nearly vacant transition offices.

Three days later, a Tuesday, Karl Rove summoned [Don] Willett [a former Bush aide from Texas who initially shepharded the program] to his office to announce that the entire faith-based initiative would be rolled out the following Monday. Willett asked just how — without a director, staff, office, or plan — the president could do that. Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, “I don’t know. Just get me a f—ing faith-based thing. Got it?” Willett was shown the door.

Kuo also writes that Rove referred to evangelical leaders as “the nuts,” and claims Rove deputy Ken Mehlman “knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly ‘nonpartisan’ events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.”

Digg It!

A group of conservative lawmakers, led by Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), called on House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) to once again investigate former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger’s handling of classified documents.

For a Congress that has conducted “only minimal oversight” of the Bush administration, the move to investigate a former Clinton administration official long out of office is both misplaced and a waste of time. In a letter objecting to the investigation, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote:

The Berger incident is not new, and there is no conceivable standard under which it would be considered a vitally important national security matter. As you know, the Justice Department thoroughly investigated the incident in 2004, and Mr. Berger pled guilty in April 2005 to a misdemeanor charge of taking classified documents without authorization. At the time of Mr. Berger’s please, Noel Hillman, the chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section, said Berger “did not have an intent to hide any of the content of the documents.”

Instead of pursuing a politically-motivated, dead-end investigation, here are some legitimate national security issues over which Congress should be exercising its oversight:

– The release of an intelligence estimate that paints a “grim” picture of the situation in Iraq which is being suppressed by the Bush administration

– The White House’s role in manipulating intelligence about Iraq through their pre-war public statements

– The National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program

– The complicity of senior administration officials in the torture and mistreatment of detainees

Mother Jones has some ideas for other investigations Congress should pursue. Also see the Carpetbagger Report.

This afternoon on MSNBC, controversial evangelist K.A. Paul announced that Speaker Dennis Hastert promised him on Tuesday that “he would resign with one week.”

Paul met with Hastert on Tuesday for more than thirty minutes, during which time Paul says he asked Hastert to resign. Hastert’s spokesman described it as a “cordial discussion,” but claimed that Hastert had been “duped” into the meeting.

Also on MSNBC, Paul said: “I know almost all the major Republican political leaders in this country, spent hundreds of hours talking to them, counseling them, in the past 10 years. They have travelled with me extensively — Bob Dole, Jack Kemp, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey.” He added, “I have been a big supporter of President Bush. I have prayed with him before. He got on his knees.”

Watch it:

More on Paul at TPM Muckraker.

UPDATE: Read more about Paul’s shady dealings on Mother Jones.

Transcript: Read more