We a) don’t have the time to read blogs at work and b) are quite capable of having our own discussions about the news thank you very much.

The fact that there is a convergence between AP’s focus on a story and what bloggers are saying can have two explanations: either journalists and bloggers are capable of reaching the same conclusions independently, or bloggers are taking their cue from the AP. Now there’s a thought…

“Abramoff, Bush told Fox News, “was an equal money dispenser.â€? The scandal, numerous commentators have assured us, is “bipartisan.â€? Was he? Is it? Well, that depends on your definitions, and your measurements.

If a scandal is defined as something exceptional—as an unusually egregious display of political squalor that sooner or later involves prosecutors and indictments—then this one is as Republican as privatized Social Security. By the charitable giveback standard, it’s either eighty per cent Republican and twenty per cent “bipartisan� (i.e., Democratic) or 83–17, as measured by, respectively, the party affiliations of the givers-back and the aggregate amounts they let go of. By the standard of straight (apparently legal) campaign contributions, the scandal is sixty-four per cent Republican: of the $5.3 million Abramoff funnelled to candidates and PACs through clients and associates from 1999 through 2004, “only� $1.9 million went to Democrats. But Abramoff, who is forty-six, has been a Republican operative since his college days. Every dollar of his personal political giving—two hundred thousand dollars since 2000—has gone to Republicans. He is a Bush-Cheney “Pioneer,� meaning he raised more than a hundred grand for the ticket. The shinier baubles—skybox fund-raisers, jobs for wives, lavish golfing trips, meals at Abramoff’s upscale restaurant—went almost exclusively to Republicans, especially those in the circle of Tom DeLay, the suspended House Majority Leader. And of those fingered in the Abramoff indictments as being involved in unlawful activities, from Abramoff himself to “Representative #1� and “Staffer B,� one hundred per cent are Republicans.

Abramoff was the apotheosis of the “K Street Project,â€? a highly successful, years-long effort to turn the capital’s “lobbying communityâ€? into a Republican auxiliary, by pressuring lobbying firms and trade associations to support a broad conservative agenda, hire only Republicans, and give money overwhelmingly to Republican politicians. In some ways, the K Street Project is a national, and grander, version of the big-city political machines of old. But those machines, corrupt though they were, had their Robin Hood aspects.”

Regarding what Bush told Fox news,can he be believed about anything?

Regardling the numbers, I do not know. Intentions matter in my book even if they pave the way to hell.

Regarding the Balkans, a big topic. I remember many clammering feeling uncomfortable about the genocide in Kosovo which apparently was not a genocide we learn after. Still… I think Clinton’s action also had a lot to do with our shame about not acting in Rwanda. And still again quite a long time went by before Clinton did anything in the Balkans. We were waiting for the Euros to act. I am just remembering off the top of my head.

Where is Samantha Powers?

Let’s contribute to Jonathan Tasini’s campaign