Marc Ambinder notes that Mitt Romney’s Huckabee problem is bigger than a casual glance at the polls would suggest:

First, savvy consultants look at two numbers to project whether, if a particular election were held today, their candidate would win. One is the head to head — and Mitt Romney still leads, narrowly, in Iowa polls. The second is intensity — and here, Mike Huckabee’s surge breaks over the walls that the Romney Iowa organization has spent so many months carefully building. Every consultant would rather be behind by five points in the head to head match ups and ahead by double digits in terms of the level of intensity.

Meanwhile, Rich Lowry notes others noting the Huckabee-Rudy nexus: “These pieces in Time and the New York Sun point out something that’s been increasingly evident over the last few days: how nicely Rudy and Huck’s strategies mesh.”

In retrospect, it all sort of makes you wonder why social conservatives didn’t just get behind Huckabee in the first place, rather than blessing Romney’s preposterous conversion to religious right values and trying to drag Fred Thompson into the race. Sure, Huckabee’s not well-liked by the economic hard-right, but cultural conservatives’ objections to Giuliani didn’t stop his backers from pushing him on the party. If Huckabee had just a modicum of money and institutional support, I think he’d be a formidable contender, but he’s got neither.

The U.S. News Political Bulletin reports that Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) is already a hot commodity on K Street:

Among those expected to be interested is the legal-lobbying power house Patton Boggs. But the associates also said that at least two unidentified investment houses with operations in Washington are interested in bring Lott onboard. K Street insiders said that Lott’s ability to make deals and schmooze allies and enemies is legendary.

The Progress Report has more on Lott’s “deals.”

Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) refuses to say why he is retiring from Congress. Many in the media have reported that Lott likely wants to enter the lucrative world of K Street before “tougher restrictions in a new lobbying law” take effect.

But the right-wing American Spectator magazine speculates that brewing corruption scandals may have contributed to Lott’s decision:

The tin-foil-hat crowd was almost immediately pushing a Jack Abramoff angle to the surprise resignation of Sen. Trent Lott. But a more recent scandal brewing — which has already ensnared Sen. Ted Stevens, among others — may also be playing on Lott’s mind.

Lott, Stevens, as well as Rep. Dennis Hastert all have ties to Bill Allen, a larger than life Alaskan businessman who owned Veco, an oil-field services company, and who was a huge benefactor of Republican politicians.

Allen has pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska legislators, including Ben Stevens, the son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The elder Stevens is currently the target of multiple federal investigation, including one on his ties to Veco.

Lott continues to stand by Stevens, donating $5,000 from his political action committee to Stevens’s re-election campaign. Lott also has ties to Allen, who accompanied him to the lavish annual “Waterfall Fishing Tournament” in Alaska. Since 1996, at least 10 current and former lawmakers have attended the trip, an opportunity for “the energy industry’s top brass” to influence lawmakers.

In addition to the lawmakers, high-ranking executives from the nation’s top oil firms — including Allen — attended the Waterfall excursions. Companies with business before Congress occasionally provided free trips to Waterfall for lawmakers and top executives on private company jets. Lawmakers may have violated congressional ethics rules by not paying for the trips. Marketplace, which originally reported on the event, noted that it could find no PAC, personal, or campaign payments for the trip from Lott.

Below is a picture of Lott next to Allen at the Waterfall Resort:

UPDATE: Larry Flynt’s Hustler offers another reason for the senator’s resignation: “Senator Lott has been the target of an ongoing HUSTLER investigation for some time now, due to confidential information that we have received.”

In a White House press briefing yesterday, Iraq war czar Gen. Doug Lute claimed that the Bush administration would not need congressional approval for it’s new long-term occupation plan that envisions an endless, unqualified, “enduring” presence in Iraq. Though it is unclear if Lute is correct in his assertion, it is clear, as Spencer Ackerman points out today, that the Iraqi constitution requires “that Iraq’s parliament has to ratify any such agreement.” Considering that 144 out of 275 parliamentarians signed a petition in May for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing, it is unlikely that two-thirds would now vote for them to stay.

After facing intense scrutiny for his bigoted comments about Muslims serving in public office, Mitt Romney attempted to “clarify” his position during a campaign stop in Florida by saying he opposes religious quotas:

It’s something I rejected, number one. And number two, point out that haven’t given a lot of thought to the people I would have in my Cabinet. I don’t have boxes I check off in terms of ethnicity, and it’s not that I need a certain number of people representing ethnic groups. Instead, I would choose people based on their merits… I’m open to having people of any faith, ethnic group. But they would be selected based on their capacity and capabilities and what they could bring to the Administration, but I don’t choose people based on checking off a box.

In his spin, Romney conveniently forgets his original argument that a Muslim shouldn’t be given a cabinet position “based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population.” As Matthew Yglesias points out, the original “account of Romney’s answer makes it seem as if Romney has no problem in principle with the idea of a Muslim quota,” but he “just doesn’t think there are enough American Muslims to justify a cabinet post.”

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) sets the record straight, after Time magazine columnist Joe Klein ignorantly claimed the Democrats’ FISA reform legislation “would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans.” Holt explains the Restore Act “explicitly states that no court order is required to listen to the conversations of foreigners that happen to pass through the U.S. telecommunications system. It does not grant Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists.” Glenn Greenwald writes, “It would be nice if other Congressional Democrats spoke up and objected to Time’s false smearing of them.” Meanwhile, FDL reports that Time is circling the wagons around Klein, refusing to answer questions about his errors.