The Wednesday ‘BushWhack’ing

Hump day, mid-week...

• Senators Obama and Clinton sparred again last night in yet another Democratic debate… by the end, Clinton looked spent and beaten, and Obama looked poisted and stoic, stay tuned.
• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, giving testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, acknowledged this morning that there are troubling signs about economic growth while also issuing a warning about inflation…
• The rnc, despite “promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials,” are now saying that it “no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes,” meaning that the will most likely never be recovered… (wow, I find it hard to believe that republicans are going back on their word… it’s so hard to express sarcasm in the written form…)
• The Senate's longest-serving member, Robert Byrd (D-WV), was admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday after he took a spill at his DC home Monday night… no word on his condition. In more Senate medical news, Virginia republican Senator John Warner entered a Fairfax hospital Tuesday for observation after a recurrence of a heart condition that was diagnosed in October… we wish both Senators well…
• Democrats, specifically the DNC, are challenging Sen. McCain’s attempts to opt out of public financing despite accepting it previously and using it to get onto the ballot in some states… a move that some Dems say is an attempt to skirt election finance laws – stay tuned.
  CNN headline: Senate republicans agree to Iraq debate… wait, what?
• And have we mentioned? That Army Chief of Staff George Casey is not kowtowing down to Bush? He told a Senate panel that he would “not embrace” going back to longer tours even if “President Bush decided to suspend troop reductions.” (Nice… It’s clear that Gates is getting fed up with Bush and his cronies maintaining that troops tours cannot be eased when, as Casey says, the Army is “under serious strain” from years of war-fighting and must reduce the length of combat tours as soon as possible. As I’ve said before, now it’s going to turn into a pissing contest to see who wins, so stay tuned…)