PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Jeanne Cummings of The Politico reports:

It’s a familiar backpedaling pattern emerging early in the new Democratic-controlled Congress. From lobbying reforms to anti-corruption proposals to curbing earmarks, Democratic lawmakers who railed against Republican corruption a year ago have flinched from imposing the harshest standards on themselves. Consequently, this Democratic Congress may end up no better prepared to police itself than the Republicans were when the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal broke and the spate of criminal convictions it spawned surfaced as a primary reason for voters’ angst last fall.

Indeed, the public may become increasingly dependent on the lobbyists to disclose the business of lawmakers. Why? The outsiders will face more serious consequences if they don’t follow the law, including the threat of Justice Department investigations, than the incumbents. . . . Congress’ ability to turn seemingly strong reforms into something a bit squishier has already been on display this year. In January, both chambers vowed to crack down on earmarks, which are the very local budget projects slipped into spending bills to help the constituents of a particular House or Senate member. It’s an issue Democrats used against Republicans to accuse them of wasteful spending (remember the Alaskan “bridge to nowhere”?) and running up the deficit. House members passed a rule that was supposed to result in publication of the name of the member requesting an earmark. The Senate took a legislative approach to the reform. Neither was actually signed into law — a step that could have given it some staying power.

Jeez. Meet the new boss, yada yada.

WHAT A STRANGE ELECTION: The only way to win is to not campaign.

GALLUP POLL OUT. Rudy and Hillary still in the lead. Ron Paul comes in at zero — yes, zero — suggesting that online activism isn’t enough to get his campaign going. I’m not sure what zero means, as an asterisk is “less than one half of one percent.” I suppose it means that no one in this sample surveyed by Gallup supported him. Mike Gravel also has a zero.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Ryan Sager: “While the Giuliani camp would surely like to return to the days of a 20-point lead, that was always an exaggerated number. But the belief in some quarters that Mr. Giuliani has tanked is equally, if not more, unrealistic. The former New York City mayor has proven quite resilient despite an onslaught of bad press in February, March, and April.”

I see some combination of Giuliani and Thompson as the GOP’s best hope.

GAYS IN THE (BRITISH) MILITARY: Much ado about nothing, apparently. I suspect it would work out the same way here.

JACK SHAFER: “How much journalistic feebleness can you pack into a 700-word story about illicit drugs? The latest issue of Newsweek explores the limits.”

THE MAIN FRONT IN THE WAR IS CONGRESS:

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

Well, if they’re targeting Congress they’re certainly targeting our weak spot.

UPDATE: Reader Drew Kelley emails: “Wouldn’t we be better off if we gave them Congress?”

As I’ve said before, I oppose torture.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Quick is unhappy with Bush: “What’s most interesting – and disgusting, and depressing, and disheartening – about reports like these is they demonstrate that the US government at the highest levels (well, one hopes – whether Bush actually is aware of something is always a chancy proposition) knows that Iran is killing our soldiers,publicly admits it, and yet has done nothing effective to stop them from doing it.”

The Bush Administration’s passivity with regard to Iran has puzzled me for some time. And disappointed me. Unless there’s some secret plan underway to topple the mullahs before fall — nice, but unlikely — it’s going to be hard to achieve the requisite degree of success in Iraq. Having a powerful nation right next door sponsoring an insurgency makes the insurgency pretty hard to beat in short order.

NEWT GINGRICH: An “Immigration Shipwreck.”

BUSINESSES LEERY on immigration bill:

As the immigration bill moved to the Senate floor, following a 69-23 vote last night, business groups worried that the worker-verification requirements of the bill would put a huge new responsibility on employers who have grown reliant on immigrant workers, even while national policy allows relatively few of them to live and work here legally. . . .

Under the bill, employers would have to submit the names of all new employees to EEVS within 18 months. They would have to review the documents of all workers — even those hired decades ago — and submit that data within three years. For federal contractors and others involved in national security, verification procedures would begin as soon as the bill is passed.

Employers contend that will put a huge strain on an employment-verification system that is used by only 1% of all employers and is considered unreliable because of holes in the government database.

The bill also puts new legal responsibilities on companies. Chief executives will be required to sign off on compliance certificates and could face perjury charges if their company’s verification documents aren’t in order.

Employers who now aren’t required to verify that a worker’s documents are genuine would face a slightly tougher test of liability — those papers would have to appear genuine to “a reasonable person,” the bill proposes.

Penalties for hiring an illegal worker would be increased to $5,000 a worker for a first offense from $250, and as much as $75,000 a worker for a third offense.

Civil-liberties groups also are wary of the verification requirements because they would require most workers to produce identity cards with fingerprints or other biometric data. The bill also requires the Social Security Administration to start issuing fraud-resistant cards and study whether it can include a picture or other personal data on the card — a requirement that will inflame that debate.

It’s a WSJ story, but this link should work for nonsubscribers for a while.

HELLO KITTY vs. Hu Jintao. I like the graphic.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE HAS THOUGHTS on law and fantasy.

FIGHTING POVERTY, one speaking fee at a time!

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “I am always amazed at the variants of anti-Americanism in Britain, France, and Germany, because beneath the convenient left-wing sermonizing one always suspects lingers nostalgic angst, of the world of preeminence before the crass ‘swaggering’ Americans took over.”

Americans “took over” only because the Europeans failed to display even the tiniest modicum of competence. We’d be much better off as mercantile competitors in a pre-1914 world, without national security worries of any consequence. Happier, too. Too bad the Euros weren’t up to the job.

UPDATE: I have to note that I’ve observed the same shift in tone from The Economist that Hanson observes lately. And this observation of his is worth quoting, too:

This cheap sermonizing of Western elites reflects two unspoken truths: privately, no well-heeled British subject would prefer the world of beheading, gender apartheid, and Sharia law that flourished in lawless Fallujah to the legal system and audit that governs the American military. And yet most understand that their own professional advancement, psychological well-being, and political acceptance come from praising the former and damning the latter.

This is a pathological situation, and it’s too bad to see that it obtains at The Economist as well as the BBC and Le Monde.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Francisco Moreno emails:

I am 37. I devoutly read the Economist from age 17. Sadly, the magazine has ceased to be fair.

I cancelled our subscription last year for this very reason, and wrote to the editor about it.

I’ve noticed this phenomenon mostly in the last couple of months, myself.

IT’S CLOTURE on the immigration bill.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus observes: “Interesting non-Republican Senate votes against taking up the immigration bill: Dorgan, Baucus, Tester, Sanders. … P.S.: Candidates Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Dodd just happen to miss the vote. Kerry too.”

MORE CRITICISM OF corn-based ethanol — er, as a fuel. In other applications it’s fine!

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: Steve Chapman observes: “It’s a hoot to hear modern kids described as self-indulgent by the generation that created its own culture out of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Talk about a sense of entitlement: When the baby boomers came along, they (we) got the voting age lowered for their benefit. They also demanded that the drinking age be lowered, and it was — only to be raised once they were safely into adulthood.”

SHE’S BAAACK! Rachel Lucas, that is.

A LOOK AT religious beliefs and behavior of college faculty. “The big surprise to me is how closely correlated religious belief is to seemingly unrelated foreign policy issues.”

DON SURBER: “A true scandal should be self-evident and need no explanation.”

GLONASS AND GALILEO: “Another of those perpetual mysteries, for which there seems no rational explanation, is the almost complete inability of the popular media to cover the EU’s white elephant, the Galileo satellite navigation system.”

THE JIMMY CARTER POLL has been updated. Please answer the new question too.

BILL WHITTLE: You are not alone.

And, Part Two.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS: Dems to send Bush no-timeline war bill:

In grudging concessions to President Bush , Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday.

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war.

Sounds like Bush won. Well, he needs a victory somewhere.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON SAYS THAT Hillary is rewriting history on Iraq.

There’s a lot of that going around.

JIMMY CARTER: “INCREASINGLY IRRELEVANT?”

Irrelevant, yeah. But increasingly? How is that possible? Only along an asymptote.

But hey, all I can say is Run, Jimmy, run!

JOHN EDWARDS WAS NOT INVOLVED in his own haircut.

It’s a sad reflection on our political system that this is kind of plausible.