Today on MSNBC’s Hardball, right-wing radio host Michael Smerconish bashed Arianna Huffington — along with former “West Wing” actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff — for reporting that at a dinner party shortly after the 2000 election, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his wife told Huffington that they didn’t vote for George Bush. Host Chris Matthews simply laughed and defended coziness between the press and politicians:

SMERCONISH: Look, I don’t get invited out anywhere. You do, Chris. … I’m grilling burgers in an hour in Philly. But let me ask you something. Isn’t this a violation of the dinner code? Isn’t this like a hooker who gives up a john? I mean, isn’t there some impropriety here?

MATTHEWS: I used to love that rule, that when you’re out having fun with each other, you weren’t sitting there with radios, you weren’t quoting them, you weren’t going to screw them in the morning. That’s the world I like to live in. But I have learned, everything you say can be used against you.

Watch it:

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke in New Jersey, confessing to reporters who pressed him about local issues that he knows little about the state. “I’m not that familiar with the political situation on the ground here,” he said. Asked about New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, Chris Christie, McCain simply claimed Christie has been “good”:

McCain deferred when pressed on whether he was familiar with Christie — a federal prosecutor appointed by President Bush — or Christie’s work. “I know it’s been good,” he said. “I’m certainly not familiar with the political environment here.”

Christie’s work, however, has been highly controversial. Last fall, he awarded his former boss, John Ashcroft, a lucrative no-bid contract to “monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court.” The contract appeared to be “political patronage,” spurring congressional hearings on contracting. Congress is still investigating the matter.

In September 2007, Blackwater guards in Iraq engaged in an unprovoked attack, according to witnesses, that killed 11 civilians. The AP reports today that the contractor “is not expected to face criminal charges” over the shooting, “all but ensuring the company will keep its multimillion-dollar contract to protect U.S. diplomats”:

Instead, the seven-month-old Justice Department investigation is focused on as few as three or four Blackwater guards who could be indicted in the Sept. 16 shootings, according to interviews with a half-dozen people close to the investigation. The final decision on any charges will not be made until late summer at the earliest, a law enforcement official said.

Nevertheless, families of the shooting victims “are suing Blackwater under a wrongful death claim in civil court.” Furthermore, federal prosecutors in North Carolina are “investigating whether Blackwater played a role in a weapons smuggling case linked to the Kurdish militant group PKK, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) hasn’t been known for criticizing the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques. In fact, his most famous comment on the issue came in December 2007, when he compared waterboarding to “swimming”:

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

The AP reports that Bond appears to have had a change of heart and is searching for a “compromise” over how the CIA can interrogate prisoners. In a letter to fellow senators yesterday, Bond proposed explicitly outlining what tactics are banned, rather than which ones are allowed:

Rather than authorizing intelligence agencies to use only those techniques that are allowed under the AFM [Army Field Manual], I believe the more prudent approach is to preclude the use of specific techniques that are prohibited under the AFM. In this way, the Congress can state clearly that certain harsh interrogation techniques will not be permissible. At the same time, this approach allows for the possibility that new techniques that are not explicitly authorized in the AFM, but nevertheless comply with the law, may be developed in the future.

Specified prohibitions in conjunction with intelligence interrogations would include: forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee and using duct tape over the eyes; applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or similar forms of physical pain; “waterboarding”; using military working dogs; inducing hypothermia or heat injury; conducting mock executions; and depriving the detainee of adequate food, water or medical care.

Bond’s proposal isn’t much of a compromise. Sure, it would ban waterboarding. But it would also give interrogators an unprecedented amount of leeway and still permit acts such as religious desecration. What exactly constitutes “similar forms of physical pain”?

The AFM doesn’t need to be rewritten, as Bond proposes. Both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Lt. Gen. Michael Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency have testified to Congress that the current AFM — which does not allow waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation tactics — provides them with “the tools that are necessary for the purpose under which we are conducting interrogations.”

Writing on the Weekly Standard’s blog yesterday, Michael Goldfarb said that he doesn’t “care” if President Bush’s policies have been a “recruiting tool for terrorists“:

As to whether Bush is a recruiting tool for terrorists–who cares? Al Qaeda was recruiting before Bush was in office and they will continue to do so after he’s gone. The important thing is that we keep killing those recruits. Eventually, one side will give up.

Justin Logan at Cato-at-Liberty points out Goldfarb’s flawed logic, noting that it justifies doing anything that is counterproductive because “after all, al Qaeda will continue recruiting whether we do it or not.”

(HT: Matthew Yglesias)

Ambinder reader TDE on Barack Obama’s sophisticated database-building operation:

I donated a small amount and supplied my work contact information below before the California primary. A few days later, I get a message on my home answering machine – not the numbers below and _not_ a listed number – thanking me for my support and inviting me to an event “at a neighbor’s house” two blocks from my house (miles away from the information I supplied below). I was not contacted at my work address. So they took my name from the donation and then located my unlisted home phone number and unprovided home address and put it in their database so they could contact me for a neighborhood meet up.

Not sure we need to give this team access to even the NSA’s legal powers, much less it’s new Bush-era unrestrained spying power. Just saying.

WNBC reports that Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) is expected to announce his resignation “within the next 72 hours — if not late Friday then certainly by Monday.” On May 1, Fossella was arrested in Alexandria, VA, and charged with driving while intoxicated. Yesterday, he issued a statement admitting that he had an “extramarital affair with Laura Fay, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and that the two of them have a 3-year-old daughter together.”