“The line between lobbying the federal government and running it just got blurrier.” New Bush counselor Ed Gillespie “will enter the White House with recent lobbying ties to dozens of companies seeking the federal government’s help on everything from proposed acquisitions to patent disputes.”

Gillespie…is a partner in Quinn Gillespie & Associates LLC, a lobbying firm whose clients include: Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), which needs antitrust approval to acquire a rival; Qualcomm (QCOM), which wants Bush to veto a federal agency’s ban on imported cell phones made with its chips; and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group trying to limit drug industry regulation. [...]

Despite the potential for conflicts of interest, Gillespie won’t be forced in his new role to recuse himself from all matters related to the companies he has lobbied for, said Ken Gross, a Washington-based attorney and former associate general counsel with the Federal Election Commission.

Instead, Gillespie will have to decide on a case-by-case basis if his activities could violate federal ethics standards.

UPDATE: Gillespie had a tough time explaining himself to reporters today:

What he hoped would be an informal chat with a few journalists on hand quickly became an initiation into life as an official part of the White House — and in this case, an unpopular one. …

“It’s going to be fun. I can’t wait. It’s exciting,” he assured everyone, including, it almost seemed, himself. [...]

Suddenly, a digital recorder appeared. The jocularity evaporated, and Gillespie immediately found himself trying not to say who his lobbying clients were.

“We have about 45 clients at the firm, and 29 people there, and I work on all kinds … it’s hard to say …” he said, before finally admitting to having some telecommunications and financial service companies in the firm’s docket.

“I wasn’t actually here to do an interview — I just wanted to say hi,” he pleaded. And so, back to generalities.

to obtain the testimony of freshly subpoenaed former White House officials Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor: “He’d prefer that there be a public hearing and that the hearing be under oath, but said that’s not necessary, given that it’s a crime to lie to investigators, even if it’s not under oath. But Specter said there needs to be a transcript — otherwise it would be much more difficult to hold an aide to account for lying.”

For the second day in a row, the House of Representatives was “held hostage” today by conservative leaders threatening to block vital homeland security and domestic spending bills because they disagree with the new process for handling earmarks.

Led by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), this is the same crew that oversaw that “extraordinarily irresponsible explosion of congressional earmarking that began shortly after the Republicans gained control of the Congress in 1995 and lasted until the voters tossed them out this past November.” They now claim to be champions of good government.

Here are the facts: on its first day, the 110th Congress passed the strictest rules governing earmarks ever. The new Congress did not place a single earmark on any of the nine FY2007 spending bills they completed in January, and pledged to cut the number of earmarks in the FY2008 spending bills to half the number that the previous Congress has enacted in FY2006.

Now, the process for the FY2008 spending bills has been delayed — in part because of the protracted Iraq debate, in part because the new Congress had to pass spending bills that the last Congress failed to do, and in part because appropriations committee staffers had to locate tens of thousands of documents for investigators in the Duke Cunningham case. As a result, appropriations chairman David Obey (D-WI) has had to modify the earmark process, but it is still a “far more open and democratic process than we have ever had before.”

[Earmarks] will be made public well in advance — probably more than a month — of the convening of a conference committee. Any earmark found to be egregious during that period can be targeted in the motion to instruct conferees, a motion controlled by the minority party. In addition, the new reforms adopted in January insure that any earmark may be fully debated in conference committee and any member of the conference can move to strike any proposed earmark.

The new-found conservative outrage over earmarks is a sham. Desperate to stop spending bills that they can’t defeat in a straight vote, they are using earmarks as an excuse to throw a wrench into the system.

For a fuller explanation, read this new piece out by American Progress senior fellow Scott Lilly, or watch Obey fight back against his critics last night on the House floor:

John McCain’s campaign has put together this video of Mitt Romney, apparently still pro-choice, some six months after his alleged conversion to the anti-choice cause:

The pro-Romney spin here is that he was just sticking with his 2002 campaign promise not to change the state’s abortion laws. In short, he didn’t want to flip-flop. But the problem with this defense is that the Romney campaign’s story is that he did in fact flip-flop back in 2004.

Percentage of Americans who think the country is on the right track in a new NBC/WSJ poll out tonight, the lowest figure in 15 years. President Bush’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 29 percent. NBC’s Brian Williams reported:

We are in a volatile period in modern American history. The mood of this nation, which was after all founded on optimism and a promise of a better life, has turned decidedly grim and downright angry on some subjects.

Watch the full report:

Earlier today, we highlighted Rudy Giuliani’s claim last night that President Clinton’s mentality towards terrorism in the 1990′s was “don’t react, let things go.” In fact, the record shows just the opposite. And as Greg Sargent notes, Giuliani admitted as much nine months ago:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Bill Clinton on Wednesday over the former president’s counterterrorism efforts, saying recent criticism on preventing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is wrong. [...]

“The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don’t think he deserves it,” Giuliani said.

Steve Benen has more.

The escalation is a failure.

As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results. The increase in U.S. forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation. It has not enhanced America’s national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on U.S. forces have increased.

Read the full letter HERE.