HSU, HSU, HSUSIE GOODBYE:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign announced tonight that it would return approximately $850,000 to about 260 donors who had been recruited or tapped by Norman Hsu, the disgraced Clinton campaign fundraiser who recently fled arrest and is now under investigation for his fundraising practices. . . . The Clinton campaign made its announcement around 6:40 p.m., shortly after the network evening news shows had begun on the East Coast. The timing was roughly the same on August 29 when Clinton advisers disclosed they were returning Mr. Hsu’s $23,000 in personal donations to Clinton campaign accounts. Clinton aides, who have been trying to contain the political damage from the Hsu revelations, have been monitoring the number of stories that the network evening news has run on Mr. Hsu — only a handful thus far.

And they’d like to keep it that way.

THE OLD ELIOT SPITZER WOULD HAVE CALLED THIS OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE: “Gov. Spitzer’s aides have been holding late-night ‘black car’ meetings to prevent the creation of e-mails or telephone records that could be subpoenaed in the state dirty-tricks scandal . . . . The top-secret rendezvous have taken place on a regular basis since Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued his bombshell report on July 23 outlining a plot by top Spitzer aides to use the State Police to gather supposedly damaging information on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), an individual close to the scandal said.” (Via NewsAlert).

THE LITTLE cyber schoolhouse.

THOUGHTS ON THE PETRAEUS HEARINGS, from Austin Bay: “Ike Skelton’s comment when GEN Petraeus’ microphone failed to work is something of a metaphor both for Washington and Baghdad: ‘Are we fixed yet?’ . . . That mike failure — as incidental as it was, and as easily solved as it was– is a useful reminder. General Murphy is always at work. If it can go wrong it will. Murphy’s Law affects everything but it rules warfare. War is the effort where everything goes wrong — Clausewitz’ concept of friction recognizes this. It’s why perseverance and will are the traits of victors. I’ve dealt with Iraq’s creaky infrastructure –it’s frustrating. But from now on every mid-level Iraqi ministry is going to smile when a US diplomat or reporter asks him how his reconstruction and maintenance operations are going. The sharp tongued will say: ‘Our parliament’s microphones work.'” Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Madhu Dahiya emailed:

So, I’m listening to CSPAN and I’m learning a lot. We are blessed as a nation to have such intelligent Congress persons, I tell you.

1. I’m learning that the BBC and ABC know how to conduct a poll and know how to count, unlike the generals (paraphrasing Congresswomen Sanchez). She says people will know what she’s talking about (again, paraphrasing). Laughing too hard to hear the whole thing.

2. I’m learning that the correct way to ask a question is to talk about North Korea and then Iran and then what you are going to have for dinner that night and….uh, what? I lost the thread and so did the questioner. Somewhere in the Proustian sentences (Proustian by length, not quality) there’s a question. I think. I knew a stauch anti-war communications professor who used these kinds of events to teach her students how not to ask a question.

3. There should be a drummer to do that little ‘ba-da-bump” sound at the end of the obvious sound-bites. Crafty and subtle, Congress people. Who helped you out with these questions? You might as well dress up like Milton Berle to deliver those dead-weight zingers.

4. Okay, quoting that three year old Washington post article by Petraeus was effective, I admit. Still, the question gave him a chance to stand by what he wrote, in addition to a chance for opponents of the war to say, “hey, he said the same thing before and nothing got better.” The only ‘draw’, I think, in the whole gotcha game, because Petraeus came across as calm and knowledgeable and the majority of questioners came across as needing to practice their ‘gotcha’ speeches a little more before going in front of CSPAN. Dear Congressians: do your homework before television, okay? If only we could ground them for not doing their homework……

5. If I had ever been as meandering in any presentation or conference at my work as the majority of these Congress-types, I would have been laughed out of the room.

Look, I know there are some good guys in Congress; they’re not all terrible. Still. Cringe-inducing.

Yuck!

Yeah, if I were advising the Bush Administration I’d encourage them to encourage Congress to hold lots of hearings on live TV. The more they talk, the worse they look. I think I’ve commented on that phenomenon before.

And reader Chad Olson writes: “As Rumsfeld might have said: ‘You go to war with the Congress you have, not the Congress you want.'”

A ONE-BUTTON SOLUTION to XML Schema issues. And who doesn’t want that?

YOU DON’T TUG ON SUPERMAN’S CAPE: Some useful advice from Megan McArdle.

UPDATE: Less gently put, here.

BAD BLOG PUBLICITY: “I’ve been on hold with American Airlines for 1 hour and 11 minutes.”

THE VICTORY CAUCUS STILL WANTS YOU TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS by signing the online petition.

ADVICE FROM MICHAEL YON for journalists covering the Petraeus report: Talk to the battalion commanders. “As for the infantry battalion commanders, they are the proverbial sweet spot. Battalion command sergeant majors can be excellent, too, but they often will not go on record. Battalion commanders will tend to be willing to go on record, and will tend to talk to journalists.”

A BIG HSU TO FILL: “Despite the clear cut evidence that something is rotten in Denmark, it is not guaranteed that there is going to be much political fallout. Hillary’s opponents are limited in their attack on Hsu by their complicity in taking his money as well. . . . It may well be that the biggest Hsu effect is to the Democrat wallet.”

A QUICK GUIDE to key Petraeus points. Plus, highlights from Crocker’s testimony.

STILL NOT SEEING ANY RESPONSE to Bob Owens’ reporting on the Beauchamp story at TNR.

BLOOD-BLOGGING FROM ISRAEL: I don’t really think that my setup looks all that luxurious by comparison.

TRIVIAL PUR-HSUIT: Danny Glover continues to round up Norman Hsu puns.

OSAMA BIN LALALALALA!

MICHAEL LERNER AND TRUTHERISM: An interesting catch at Extreme Mortman.

A POLITICAL BLOGGING SCHOLARSHIP.

A HOBSON’S CHOICE for Democratic politicians. “They must play the pessimist’s part – it is the only way to maintain their majority. Anything else is political suicide for them. They are irretrievably invested in defeat. They therefore have to deny that we are making progress, no matter how obvious that progress is — and no matter how relieved they are, deep down inside, as Americans, that we are making it.”

IMPORTANT ADVICE: Don’t recline your seat in a moving vehicle.

MORE FIRST-HAND REPORTING FROM IRAQ, this time from Bill Ardolino. Compare with General Petraeus’s testimony.

LIVEBLOGGING THE PETRAEUS TESTIMONY, with extra snark toward the BBC’s coverage. And lots more at The Tank.

Plus, threat of civil war in Iraq has been averted, according to Maliki. Further background, with charts and numbers, here.

And read this, too. Best quote: “‘No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,’ noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. ‘The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.'” Nice to know these folks have the courage of their convictions. . . .

UPDATE: Silencing Petraeus! Well, the mike didn’t work, which the Limbaughs and Hannitys will have fun with. Plus this observation: “So you think technology is bad in Iraq? The U.S. House of Representatives can’t get the commanding general a working mic in Washington, D.C. . . . Completely embarrassing.” Video here. And this: “If this were a hearing or speech in Iraq, this would be a mocking example of how badly things are going there, how inept the infrastructure and the people who run it are. But it’s not Iraq, it’s Ike Skelton’s committee.”

Plus, trying to pretend it’s July.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Full Petraeus transcript and slides, here. Further thoughts here.

And regarding that anonymous Democratic Senator who wants outside groups to do the name-calling, a reader emails:

What I find particularly interesting about the good Senator’s position is that the Senate confirmed Petraeus by a vote of 81-0. Not one single Senator voted against putting him in charge of the campaign in Iraq. And the plans to “surge” more troops into the fight had already been announced, so they can’t even claim “if we knew then what we know now”.

Indeed.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Anbar awakens.

UPDATE: Brendan Loy asks a question I’ve been hearing more and more: “It’s the most convincing account I’ve read of the success we’re (finally) having in Iraq, and frankly, I don’t understand why the hell it’s being left to individual conservative bloggers to write accounts like this. Where is the media? Where is the Bush Administration’s vaunted propaganda machine?”

Katie Couric has been on the job! The Bush propaganda machine, however, seems more vaunted than real.

MORE PROBLEMS FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC: Bob Owens looks into things in Iraq and finds no evidence that TNR did the fact-checking it claims. In fact, it seems quite doubtful that they did. Worse, their hunker-down-and-hope-people-forget strategy has merely served to further undermine their credibility.

How hard would it have been to admit they got snookered and say “we’re sorry — we were fooled?” I think they’ll be asking themselves that question in coming days.

IN THE MAIL: Larry Sabato’s A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country. Some of the proposals are better than others, but there’s something for everyone here — from expanding the U.S. Senate to term limits and a balanced budget amendment.

CHECKING UP ON THE NEW REPUBLIC: The Beauchamp story won’t go away. In fact, I think you’ll be hearing more about it.