contrary to previous speculation, a spokesman for Johnson says.

Ney’s lawyers are encouraging the former lawmaker’s friends to write letters to Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, letting her know “your feelings about Bob’s character, his work for his constituents in Ohio, his work on national issues, his integrity, his dedication to public service.” Ney has pleaded guilty to “performing official acts for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel and skybox sports tickets” and his sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 19.

John McCain has made clear that he doesn’t like the blogosphere.

Now he has introduced legislation that would treat blogs like Internet service providers and hold them responsible for all activity in the comments sections and user profiles. Some highlights of the legislation:

– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”

– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.

— Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that this proposal may be based more “on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts.” When he introduced his legislation to the Senate, McCain offered no evidence that children are being victimized by people who post comments on blogs.

McCain’s legislation could deal a serious blow to the blogosphere. Lacking resources to police their sites, many individual blogs may have to shut down open discussion.

(HT:The Liberty Papers)

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that were signed into law during the two-year 109th Congress, more than one-quarter dealt with naming or renaming federal buildings and structures — primarily post offices — after various Americans.”

Percent of Americans who want most U.S. troops out of Iraq within two years.

Questioning why Vice President Cheney has been “publicly silent and mostly out of sight” since the Iraq Study Group issued its report, U.S. News reports that a former Cheney adviser believes the vice president is now cutting-and-running from the “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq:

“I think we’ll see less of him than ever,” says the associate. “Iraq is now Bush’s baby, and Cheney doesn’t want to be tarred with it in the eyes of historians.”

Regardless of the actions Cheney takes in the future, history will not forget that he has been at the center of the administration’s most egregious attempts to both sell the war (“we believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons“) and falsely report the situation on the ground (“I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency”).

Based on conversations with sources inside the White House, U.S. News notes there may be an alternative explanation for Cheney’s disappearance:

White House insiders say Cheney is playing an inside game, advising President Bush privately not to change course too much in Iraq, not to withdraw U.S. troops anytime soon, and not to talk directly with the hard-line regimes in Iran and Syria about the situation.

Cheney, an architect of current policy, is waiting for Bush to decide, perhaps early in the new year, what to do next before he speaks out. At that point, insiders say, he will go public to sell the president’s decision around the country, especially in speeches to conservative audiences who still have a high regard for Cheney, even though his popularity with the public is very low.

Cheney is reportedly advocating taking the side of the Shiites in Iraq’s civil war, a position which caused him to be “summoned” recently to Saudi Arabia and has stoked fears of a broader war in the Middle East. Whatever motivations Cheney has for remaining publicly silent, he seems intent on pushing his failed ideological vision to its disastrous ends, while escaping accountability for it.

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