During tonight’s CNN/YouTube debate, a YouTube questioner asked the candidates why they refuse to condemn waterboarding as torture. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said that before making such a determination, he would need to get “counsel on a matter of this nature” from “a lot” of people. One of the people with whom Romney said he would specifically like to speak is Blackwater vice chairman Cofer Black:

I am not. I’m not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture will know what things we’re able to do and what things we’re not able to do. And I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some 35 years.

Watch it:

Black is Romney’s Senior Adviser for counterterrorism and national security issues. He has described Black as a man with a “long and impressive career dedicated to making America safer and more secure in the world,” despite the fact that Blackwater has allegedly been involved in at least seven violent episodes this year that have left almost 30 Iraqi civilians dead.

Romney is also relying on a man for torture advice who in 2001, infamously ordered a CIA agent to “Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice,” and once promised put the “heads” of terrorists in Afghanistan “on sticks“:

“We’re going to kill them,” CIA counterterrorism official Cofer Black said, according to the book, which details the Bush administration’s build-up to the Iraq war. “We’re going to put their heads on sticks. When we’re through with them they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.”

Romney has repeatedly dodged answering questions during debates, instead saying he needs to consult with his advisers before taking a stand. During an October CNBC debate, Romney said that before figuring out if he’d need congressional approval to invade Iran, he’d have to ask his lawyers: “You sit down with your attorneys and tell you what you have to do.”

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A federal grand jury indicted outgoing GOP Sen. Trent Lott’s brother-in-law, Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, today “on charges that he and four other men tried to bribe a Mississippi state court judge.” Scruggs and his associates allegedly conspired to “bribe Mississippi Third Circuit Court Judge Henry L. Lackey with at least $40,000 in cash” after “Scruggs’ firm was named as a defendant in a dispute involving $26.5 million in attorneys’ fees.” The group of Mississippi attorneys in the indictment also include a former state auditor and Lott’s nephew Zach.

CNN and YouTube billed tonight’s Republican debate as one in which “YOU ask the questions of the candidates through videos you submit on YouTube.” After the Democratic debate in July with the same format, Steve Grove, YouTube’s news and politics editor, said the debate was “more democratic than ever.”

Out of almost 5,000 video submissions, CNN chose to pose 34 to the candidates tonight. Instead of alloting all slots to ordinary citizens — who don’t normally have access to politicians — CNN gave airtime to a question from Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist. Watch it:

Norquist is a powerful right-wing Washington insider, with no shortage of access to the candidates. He was deeply involved in the unethical and secretive K Street Project, which helped foster the culture of corruption in Washington, and was close friends with fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In July, he received an exclusive meeting with Karl Rove to discuss the administration’s Iraq policies.

Ironically, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) also submitted a YouTube question. Yet CNN rejected it, arguing that he “has regular access to politicians.”

UPDATE: CNN also didn’t air the question of DNC chairman Howard Dean (which was submitted after the deadline), or the video submitted by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT).

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After Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) announced his resignation this week, it was widely speculated that Lott was quitting in order to dodge Senate ethics standards that take effect next year. The new rules require senators to wait two years before entering “the lucrative world” of lobbying Congress. Lott denied the rumor at a press conference, saying the new law “didn’t have a big role” in his decision.

At the same press conference, Lott was also asked about Senate ethics rules regarding “negotiating with a future employer,” to which he replied that he’s “not really involved in negotiation,” but that “there are some opportunities out there” that he wants “to be able to consider”:

QUESTION: Senator, I understand there’s a rule in the Senate that if you’re negotiating with a future employer, that you must register with the Ethics Committee. Have you been down to that committee yet?

LOTT: Well, I have not yet, but I’m not really involved in negotiation. I’ve tried to stay away from that. There are some opportunities out there that I want to be able to consider, but I have nothing that we’ve agreed to or lined up.

One of the “opportunities” that Lott is considering, according to his son, Chester Lott — who is also a lobbyist — is “a partnership” with former Sen. John Breaux (D-LA), who until today, was the senior counsel at a powerhouse lobbying firm. But just this afternoon, Breaux announced that he was leaving Patton Boggs in order “to form his own firm with his son, John Jr.”:

Former United States Senator John Breaux, Senior Counsel to Patton Boggs Law Firm, announced that he would be forming a new public policy consulting firm in January 2008.

Breaux stated that while he has the greatest personal and professional respect for Tom Boggs and the members of the company, the new firm will offer him an opportunity to be in business with his son, John Jr., a goal that he has always wanted to achieve.

Though the younger Lott told Legal Times that there have “been no formal talks at all” between the two senators, he also added that “Breaux and his father have long joked about the prospect of working together.”

If Lott is indeed considering “a partnership” with Breaux — speculation of which Breaux’s move fuels — then their plans may have been another factor in the timing of his resignation. The new ethics rules that take effect at the end of the current session have much more stringent regulations about negotiating future employment with lobbyists:

If Senators want to engage in negotiations or make any arrangements for jobs involving lobbying, they must wait to do so until their successors have been elected. There are no exceptions to this rule.

If Lott had resigned next year, he would have had to wait until after his successor is elected to even begin negotiating his future lobbying job, which means he may have needed to wait almost a year to start cashing in with his old buddy Breaux.

In January, pursuant to current law, all “federal civilian workers will get a 2.5 percent across-the-board raise.” Additionally, “workers living in more expensive regions of the country” are supposed to “receive an additional raise of 12.5 percent.” But President Bush ordered today that the raises for those workers will be slashed significantly:

On average, workers who live in such metro areas were due to receive an additional raise of 12.5 percent. Bush is cutting that added bump to 0.5 percent.

That means that workers scheduled to receive pay differentials will now receive a total pay raise of 3 percent, not 15 percent, on average.

Bush said he was taking action because the scheduled pay raises would exceed his budget by $12.7 billion next year, and only compound in later years.

This isn’t the first time Bush has cut the pay of low-level federal staffers. In July, he issued a pay cut for “those at the bottom of the White House staff pay scale,” while awarding a $2,800 raise to Karl Rove.

Earlier today, Al Hubbard, chairman of President Bush’s National Economic Council, announced that he was resigning from the White House after serving three years. But in an interview on the Fox Business Channel two weeks ago, Hubbard gave no indication of his desire to leave. In fact, he said that he was “very happy where I am“:

Just two weeks ago, Hubbard appeared with Glick on FBN. She asked him if he would remain in his position for the rest of President Bush’s time in office. Glick asked if he would consider taking a job in the private sector, such as CEO positions at Citigroup or Merrill Lynch. Hubbard responded, “That’s nice of you to even suggest I would be considered…I’m very happy where I am.”

I read this Jonah Goldberg post that seemed to be complaining that liberals don’t cite enough sacred texts that can then be debunked (and therefore gain an unfair advantage by keeping our true theological roots shrouded in mystery) with some puzzlement, so I was glad to see him eventually clarify that he thinks a handful of inane pranks can rectify the situation.

The CNN/YouTube Republican presidential debate tonight will allow people nationwide to upload a 30-second video to YouTube and ask questions directly to the candidates. After a similar Democratic debate in July, members of the media hailed the format as “historic.”

Yet CNN staff still selected which YouTube questions were presented to the candidates — as they will tonight — often resulting in “bland, softball” questions being posed. Several technology experts have called on debate organizers to go a step further and involve the public “in deciding which video questions were worth airing.”

But in an interview with Wired, CNN senior vice president David Bohrman defended CNN’s methods, arguing that the public can’t be trusted to choose intelligent questions:

For all the talk about online voter empowerment, the web is still too immature a medium to set an agenda for a national debate, says CNN senior vice president David Bohrman.

“If you would have taken the most-viewed questions last time, the top question would have been whether Arnold Schwarzenegger was a cyborg sent to save the planet Earth,” says Bohrman, the debate’s executive producer. “The second-most-viewed video question was: Will you a convene a national meeting on UFOs?”

Are the public’s questions really all that different from the ones chosen by journalists? After all, at the Oct. 31 Democratic debate, moderator Tim Russert also asked a “serious question” to Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) about whether he ever saw a UFO. Watch it:

And of course, at its recent Democratic debate, CNN prevented UNLV student Maria Luisa from asking a serious question about Yucca Mountain, telling her to instead ask Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), “Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?”

In August, The New York Times surveyed seven people with “experience in both new media and old” to describe what a “a real new-media debate” would look like. Read the piece here.