Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

India's Red Fort is added to the list of World Heritage sites. More here.

After six years of kowtowing to the White House, Congress is finally challenging President Bush’s campaign to trample all legal and constitutional restraints on his power.

Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first — and likely not the last — criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress. . . .

Last week, in a bit of especially mendacious spin, Tony Fratto, the White House deputy press secretary, responded to the subpoenas on the illegal wiretapping by saying, “It’s unfortunate that Congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation.”

Actually, Mr. Bush chose that route long ago by defining consultation as a chance for lawmakers to hear about decisions he had already made, bipartisanship as a chance for Democrats to join Republicans in rubber-stamping those choices and Congressional oversight as self-serving and possibly seditious. At this point, confrontation is far preferable to the path the Republican majority in Congress chose for so many years — capitulation.

-- THE NEW YORK TIMES

President Bush's favorite role model is, famously, Jesus, but Winston Churchill is close behind. The president admires the wartime British prime minister so much that he keeps what he calls "a stern-looking bust" of Churchill in the Oval Office. "He watches my every move," Bush jokes. These days, Churchill would probably not care for much of what he sees.

. . . But I think Bush's hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president's wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out -- but they're between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill.

-- LYNNE OLSON

It must be frustrating these days to work for the Bush administration TV network – known officially as Fox News – given the president’s lame-duck status and the grim prospects for a Republican victory in 2008. Even the pollster at Fox News seems incapable of divining a silver lining for the beleaguered GOP. The latest survey. . . reports that only 31 percent of Americans praise Bush’s job performance (the lowest ever recorded by Fox News); reports that only 46 percent of self-identified conservatives praise his performance (another Fox News nadir); and reports that only 42 percent of "born-again Christians" praise his performance (another Fox News nadir).

-- DICK POLMAN

It’s beginning to look like [“Sunset Boulevard”] Billy Wilder's classic about the aging movie queen with a loose grip on reality in scenes staged by her faithful retainer.

Karl Rove is no Erich von Stroheim, but he is directing an alternate reality for George Bush. This week the locale was the Naval War College, where extras in dress uniform watched in awe the Commander-in-Chief, with maps and illustrations, giving a presentation about how well things are going in Iraq.

Back in Washington John Warner, Dick Lugar and other Senate Republicans were telling the White House staff that July 15th, when a Congressionally mandated, preliminary report on progress in Iraq is due, will be pivotal.

The cameras are set to roll. Will George Bush be ready for his close-up?

-- ROBERT STEIN

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is secretly planning to begin withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq by February 2008, Australian media reported.

-- REUTERS

Hmm, what was the most disturbing part of Joe Lieberman’s appearance on ABC’s This Week? It’s a surprisingly tough call.

Was it Lieberman’s reality-be-damned insistence that "the surge is working"? That was certainly disconcerting. Was it Lieberman’s assertion that leading Democrats are weak because they reject a neocon vision of foreign policy? That wasn’t much better.

But the real gem of the morning was Lieberman’s bizarre argument that terrorism in Britain should mean more warrantless domestic surveillance here.

-- STEVE BENEN

Roswell, the story that never dies. Well, somebody who was actually working at Roswell died last year and his sworn affidavit has been released to the public. If even half of it is true, I have one question. Why haven't the aliens ever come back? Didn't they like us? Did they think we were a waste of time and valuable resources? Well, that was more than one question and here is another. Why would the Air Force have crash test dummies in weather balloons that were supposed to be looking for evidence of Russian nuclear tests . . . in New Mexico?

-- DEB

With the mandate that everyone in Massachusetts have health insurance taking effect on Sunday, more than 130,000 people — about a third of those who were uninsured a year ago — now have coverage, officials say.

But most of those who have signed up are poor enough to qualify for free or state-subsidized insurance.

People who must pay the full cost themselves, who are crucial to the success of the nation’s most ambitious effort to achieve near-universal coverage, may now be a majority of the state’s uninsured and not all are rushing to get coverage. Many of them are healthy young people in their 20’s and 30’s, state officials say.

-- PAM BELLUCK

So checking the post today I found a letter addressed to my son, inviting him to apply for a Citibank Platinum Select Mastercard. Up to 40,000 American Airlines airmiles included! I’ve had a chat with the little guy about it (I still call him the little guy—corny, I know, but other Dads will understand), and he won’t be signing up, partly because it’s a bad deal (18.24 percent variable rate, annual fee after the first year), but mostly because he is six and a half weeks old.

-- KIERAN HEALY

Photograph by The Associated Press