In an online chat with the Washington Post today, former UN Ambassador John Bolton — who is “known to be close to Vice President Dick Cheney” — was asked if the way Cheney “has dramatically altered the role and power of the vice presidency” was “a positive change.” Noting “Cheney’s role reflects a continuing evolution of his office,” Bolton responded, “I think this is entirely a positive development“:

QUESTION: Mr. Ambassador: Vice President Cheney has dramatically altered the role and power of the vice presidency in this administration. Is this a positive change? Do you see future administrations retaining a more useful role for the VP, and who in current politics has the strength of character, in either party, to follow Mr. Cheney’s lead in wielding even a part of that power in what can be an essentially unaccountable role?

JOHN BOLTON: I think that Vice President Cheney’s role reflects a continuing evolution of his office. It is true he has more responsibilities that any prior Vice President, but his immediate predecessor, Vice President Gore, had more responsibilities than any of his. I think this is entirely a positive development.

Bolton, who was part of the team of lawyers that fought the 2000 Florida recount on behalf of Bush and Cheney, shares many of Cheney’s views on expansive executive power. For instance, in 2006, when Bolton’s Senate confirmation was set to fail, he and Cheney sought “some way to bypass the Senate.”

Given their relationship, it’s not surprising that Bolton would consider Cheney’s efforts to increase the power of the Vice Presidency a “positive development.” Here are a few examples: Read more

He’s an Obama guy:

Helps with the white working class?

UPDATE: Craig from Craigslist too, though that’s more of a wine track endorsement.

In November, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) voted to confirm Attorney General Mike Mukasey, assuring him of passage in the Senate Judiciary Committee. But today, after Mukasey’s hedging on waterboarding, Schumer said he was “disappointed” in the attorney general’s responses:

I thought there was a hope, not large, that you just might rise to the occasion. So I’m not surprised with your testimony, but I remain disappointed.

Watch it:

UPDATE: Later in the questioning, Mukasey refused to support the outlawing of waterboarding.

Kevin Drum’s right — this here ad is pretty delicious:

And to its credit, while everything in here has been stripped of context in a way that produces a misleading gestalt, it’s all perfectly accurate.

Our guest bloggers is Henry Fernandez, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Did immigration Cost Romney Florida? Sure looks like it.

On Florida’s airwaves all week, Romney delivered strong punitive deport-them-all rhetoric. He even highlighted the endorsement of anti-immigrant zealot Kris Kobach. And Floridians heard him loud and clear.

Exit polling showed that those Republican voters who wanted the undocumented deported en masse went overwhelmingly for Romney. This is not surprising since McCain is a godfather of the failed Senate comprehensive immigration grand bargain, which would have put 12 million undocumented immigrants on a long path to citizenship if they had no criminal record, paid a fine and met other high standards.

But here was Romney’s problem — most Florida Republicans did not support his deport-only strategy. Fifty-eight percent preferred either a path to citizenship or a temporary worker program. McCain had a 22 point lead with path to citizenship voters and a 7 point lead with those supporting a temporary worker program.

And what about Latinos, the Republican holy grail in Florida, and the group most likely to be supportive of comprehensive immigration reform? McCain won them going away. He beat Romney by 45 points among Cubans and 32 points among “other Hispanics.” In fact, if not for the Latino vote, McCain would have lost to Romney.

And this despite being the son of a Mexican immigrant.

Are conservatives getting the message? As David Brooks said in today’s New York Times: “Can we please stop pretending that immigration is a good issue for Republicans? The restrictionist side can’t even produce a victory for their man in a Republican primary.”

– Henry Fernandez

Digg It!

Remember a few months ago when the conventional wisdom had it that Democrats needed to be in a state of panic about how anti-immigration sentiments were going to run them out of down. At the time, I tried to cite polls which kept showing that the audience for anti-immigrant politics was, though loud, actually pretty small. A lot of people came back at me with the notion that, well, the incredible power of the immigration issue isn’t something you can see in the polls.

And maybe not, but here we have Captain Amnesty himself looking set to secure the Republican Party’s nomination — a turn of events which certainly makes it seem like the polls were right and this simply isn’t an issue that very many people care all that deeply about.

On Monday, President Bush issued a signing statement on the National Defense Authorization Act. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post rips the lack of media news stories on Bush’s neglect of the Constitution:

Looking for a news story about all this in your morning paper? You won’t find one in The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times or the Wall Street Journal.

As Froomkin noted, the only major paper to cover the Iraq signing statement Boston Globe.

UPDATE: The New York Times does criticize the signing statement in an op-ed today, but it does not devote a news story to the issue. More coverage in today’s Progress Report.