McClatchy ran a detailed profile today on Hans von Spakovsky, the top Bush administration official who many in Congress believe is “a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.”

“Mr. von Spakovsky was central to the administration’s pursuit of strategies that had the effect of suppressing the minority vote,” charged Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief who worked under him.

He and other former career department lawyers say that von Spakovsky steered the agency toward voting rights policies not seen before, pushing to curb minor instances of election fraud by imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning poor and minority voters to cast ballots.

Von Spakovsky, who was recess-appointed to the Federal Election Commission in December 2005, is scheduled to appear at a June 13 Senate confirmation hearing. Much more on his record at Mahablog, TPMMuckraker, and Hullabaloo.

Jerome Hauer, New York City’s first emergency management director, was once part of “the nucleus” of Rudy Giuliani’s “tight-knit set of advisers.” Now, he’s trying to set the record straight about what he sees as Giuliani’s “deeply flawed” anti-terrorism record:

In recent days, Mr. Hauer has challenged Mr. Giuliani’s recollection that he had little role as mayor in placing the city’s emergency command center at the ill-fated World Trade Center.

Mr. Hauer has also disputed the claim by the Giuliani campaign that the mayor’s wife, Judith Giuliani, had coordinated a help center for families after the attack.

And he has contradicted Mr. Giuliani’s assertions that the city’s emergency response was well coordinated that day, a point he made most notably to the authors of “Grand Illusion,” a book that depicts Mr. Giuliani’s antiterrorism efforts as deeply flawed.

In its highly-publicized 400th episode last night, The Simpsons skewered Fox News and modern journalism. At one point, outraged news anchor Kent Brockman confesses to the world:

Friends, the press and the government are in bed together in an embrace so intimate and wrong, they could spoon on a twin mattress and still have room for Ted Koppel. Journalists used to questions the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the 6:00 News. Demand more of your government. Demand more of your press.

Watch it:

“The rate of carbon-dioxide emissions from global industry has accelerated in recent years, outstripping even the highest earlier projections,” a new National Academy of Sciences report shows. From 2000 to 2004, “about 7.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide were emitted by industry world-wide,” millions more than the IPCC had projected “under its most extreme scenario.” More from McClatchy.

UPDATE: More from Kid Oakland.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell argued in an op-ed today for limiting restrictions on domestic surveillance, saying of the 1978 FISA law:

“Technology and threats have changed, but the law remains essentially the same. … Because the law has not been changed to reflect technological advancements, we are missing potentially valuable intelligence needed to protect America.”

But as Glenn Greenwald notes, Congress altered and “modernized” FISA in 2001, prompting President Bush to say:

The bill before me takes account of the new realities and dangers posed by modern terrorists. … The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones.

Read Greenwald’s full piece.

“In a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding Monday, Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA) expressed their ‘extreme disappointment’ in the White House’s unwillingness to cooperate in their investigation into the firings of U.S. attorneys and threatened a ‘compulsory process’ if the White House continues to be unresponsive.” Conyers and Sanchez note that despite the central role that White House officials appear to play in this scandal, they have yet to turn over a single document or conduct a single interview. Read their full letter HERE. Paul Kiel has more.

Documents are HERE.

Watch the first scenes released from Michael Moore’s new film:

Moore held a chat today on DailyKos. Check it out HERE.

during the hospital meeting with Gonzales and Card:

Alerted to the others’ visit, Comey raced to the hospital himself, getting there with just minutes to spare. “I remember waiting; it wasn’t long, but it felt like forever,” Comey told U.S. News in an exclusive interview. “And I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do? What if they get him to sign something? Do I intervene physically? What do I do?‘”

Incidentally, James Comey is 6-foot-8.