A new government transparency effort sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation, and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Check out its site HERE, and a description from Matt Stoller HERE.

The New Yorker profiles “24″ creator Joel Surnow, whose show has become a foreign policy guide for the right: “Every American wishes we had someone out there quietly taking care of business,” [Surnow] said. “It’s a deep, dark ugly world out there. Maybe this is what Ollie North was trying to do. It would be nice to have a secret government that can get the answers and take care of business — even kill people.“

U.S. News: “A federal judge has ruled that a CIA agent identified only as ‘Doe,’ allegedly fired after he gathered prewar intelligence showing that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction, can proceed with his lawsuit against the CIA.”

It’s quite true as GFR and Greg Sargent point out that Hillary Clinton, like her husband, seems to get uniquely bad treatment at the hands of the MSM. Since a big part of what bloggers do is attack the press for being unfair to Democrats, one assumes this means we’ll see many newspapers articles being unfair to Clinton and many blog posts complaining about them.

Still, I think it’s important for liberals not to let Clinton’s good fortune in her enemies distract people from basic realities. The precise nuances of what everyone’s said about Iran so far aside, it’s pretty clear that Edwards and Clinton have similar records as officeholders, that Obama has a somewhat more liberal record than those two, and that Edwards has positioned himself to the left of Obama and Clinton in terms of what he’s laid out so far in the campaign. Precisely how one should evaluate Edwards versus Obama in that context isn’t obvious to me. And, again, it doesn’t just follow from the fact that Clinton is clearly the least liberal of the three that she shouldn’t be the Democratic nominee. Perhaps you, like Clinton, have views that aren’t especially liberal. Alternatively, perhaps you think Clinton’s less-liberal positioning is a price that needs to be paid for electoral purposes. I can think of any number of things one might say about this and, obviously, there’s more to life than just ideology — competence, intelligence, judgment, character, etc. all matter.

But insofar as we’re talking about ideology, we should be clear. Clinton, like her husband, is both hated by the right and treated unfairly by the press and a not very liberal politician, coming from the party’s more centrist wing and flanked by advisors from the same. In a general election, she’d clearly be the progressive choice against Giuliani, McCain, Romney, etc. but is clearly the less progressive choice vis-a-vis Edwards and Obama. I don’t think the fact that she’s mistreated by the press should distract people from this basic point. What’s more, garnering bad press is a bug, not a feature, when you’re looking for a candidate. Which is all, I suppose, by way of introducing my Guardian piece about Clinton’s Iraq War revisionism.

The number of Republican House members who will back the nonbinding resolution opposing escalation in Iraq, according to Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), “which would be the strongest repudiation of Bush’s Iraq policy from Republicans since the war began nearly four years ago.”

UPDATE: The text of the resolution is now public:

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq, and;
(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 19, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Ludacris, the “vile rapper” repeatedly targeted by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, won three Grammy Awards last night, including Best Rap Artist. He gave a shout-out to O’Reilly:

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