The U.S. embassy in Baghdad remains plagued by”major deficiencies in the infrastructure,” according to a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from the House Oversight Committee. The finding raises “questions” about the State Department’s December decision to certify that the embassy compound was “substantially complete.” Waxman plans to subpoena Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte if the department does not provide documents related to the embassy’s construction.

The State Department has stopped processing visa applications from Iraqi and Afghan translators who have risked their lives assisting U.S. military units because “the current legal quota of 500 visas for the program this year is about to be reached.” A bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and signed by President Bush last month raised the quota for Iraqi translators to 5,000, but it has yet to be implemented.

This seems like a pretty effective and well-made ad to me:

That said, the question becomes who do I want picking up the phone — the candidate who voted for invading Iraq, or the other one? The candidate willing to take some controversial stands on national security issues or the one who’s addicted to the politics of fear as a weapon and timidity as a defense mechanism? Most of all, the ultimate upshot of this sort of “are you experienced?” politics is that John McCain ought to be the next president. But while I’d like to have experienced hands at the levers of power, what I’d really like is a president who has good ideas and the courage to stand up for them.

As someone interested in spearheading the looming nineties alt-rock renaissance, however, I’m pleased to see Matchbox 20 references entering our punditry.

Having heard this, I think it seems somewhat obvious in retrospect, but I met a smart conservative thinker last night who explained to me the conservative base’s fear about John McCain in understandable terms for the first time. Basically, McCain or no McCain this still looks like a bad year for the GOP. If he wins, it’s likely to be a personal win based on his persona and tarnishing Obama’s persona, in which the Democrats still pick up some House and Senate seats. Next up, it’s governing time. McCain’s not someone who enjoys a strong personal or professional relationship with John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, and he doesn’t owe any great debt to the GOP activist base. Under the circumstances, it’s plausible to imagine him striking a bunch of compromises with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on domestic issue in order to get a freer hand with which to conduct foreign policy.

That does seem plausible to me. On the other hand, it strikes me as an equally plausible story about Mitt Romney who had a much more substantial record of reaching compromises with a Democratic legislature. But if you put a lot of weight on purely personality-driven factors, I can see the particular fear of McCain since by all accounts he just doesn’t like the Republican congressional leaders.

That said, a plausible story is just that, a plausible one. Campaign promises are a very imperfect guide to governing, but they’re still one of the best guides we’ve got. The safest thing seems to me to assume that McCain more-or-less means what he says, and that if he wins he’ll govern on the platform he just ran and won on.

When Medicare was being created in 1964, Ronald Reagan said, “I think we are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program.”

To this day, conservatives continue to resist universal programs. In his 2008 State of the Union address, President Bush once again mentioned private health savings accounts, despite the fact that they may increase the number of uninsured Americans. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) similarly touts private plans, saying he wants people to “go out and choose their insurer anywhere in America.”

A new poll from NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health, however, finds that most Americans reject conservatives’ approach to health care. In fact, the majority of the public supports mandates requiring Americans to purchase health insurance. NPR reports:

When asked whether they would support a broad proposal that would require everyone to get coverage, 59 percent said they would support it. Such a proposal would require employers to provide coverage or pay into a pool. The government would help low-income people get coverage, and insurance companies would be required to take anyone who applies. People who don’t get coverage through one of these channels or purchase it themselves would pay a fine.

As Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic notes, “In a system based on private insurance, a lot of people won’t obtain even affordable insurance without some sort of requirement.” This point is backed up by prominent health care experts such as Columbia’s Sherry Glied and former Clinton administration adviser on Medicare Bruce Vladeck, who have criticized the tactic of scaring Americans into thinking mandates will force them to buy unaffordable health coverage.

For a practical approach to guaranteeing an American right to affordable, quality health coverage, the Center for American Progress has more here.

Yesterday in a column for The News-Sentinel, Timothy S. Goeglein — a special assistant to President Bush — referenced Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, a former professor at Dartmouth College. Curious about the obscure reference, blogger Nancy Nall googled the name, only to find that full sections of Goeglein’s 16-paragraph essay were copied nearly word-for-word from a 10-year old Dartmouth Review essay by Jeffrey Hart. Confronted about the plagiarism, Goeglein told The Journal Gazette that “it is true” he copied Hart and that he is “entirely at fault.”