Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

I remain unconvinced McCain can put John McCain aside long enough to seal any potential deal with the Right.

-- DAN RIEHL

The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they've got. That’s been their whole approach. She's going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different."

-- BILL BRADLEY

It doesn't look to me like John McCain was "unhinged" or "irate" or losing his "cool" in his recent videotaped airplane confrontation with the NYT's Elisabeth Bumiller. He was simply employing the debating tactic he often uses when confronted with a question he can't answer safely--which is to bully and intimidate and interrupt the questioner, using up all the available conversational space until the "questioning" moves on. (To get a word in edgwise, whoever is confronting him would have to be ready to engage in an undignified shouting match, which most are unwilling to do.) McCain used the same technique in the Republican debates when confronted with questions he didn't want to answer on immigration.

-- MICKEY KAUS

Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle.

-- JSN

I’ve seen lots of virtual ink spilled lately on whether the prolonged primary will leave lasting intraparty scars. The short answer is who knows. But speaking personally, even though my irritation with Clinton has spiked lately, I don’t see any lasting scars so long as the ending is legitimate – i.e., is consistent with ex ante rules.

-- PUBLIUS

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's chief spokesman, said during a conference call with reporters that Clinton would not pick a running mate who has not met the "national security threshold" — as Clinton’s military advisers and Wolfson put it on the call — but that it is possible Obama could meet that threshold by this summer's Democratic convention.

-- SAM YOUNGMAN

The fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will look like a college seminar discussion compared with the battle that will ensue between John McCain and the Democratic contender.

-- JACOB S. HACKER

With President Bush's would-be successors squabbling over Iraq, they are neglecting the main threat of terror that will face one of them taking office next January.

In Pakistan, Musharraf is on his way out as leaders of the two dominant parties agree to reinstate the judges he fired and try to strip him of crucial powers.

"Afghanistan is slipping toward failure," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden warns. "The Taliban is back, violence is up, drug production is booming and the Afghans are losing faith in their government. All the legs of our strategy--security, counter-narcotics efforts, reconstruction and governance--have gone wobbly."

The schedule of staying or going in Iraq is dominating the foreign policy debate in the presidential campaign, but Pakistan and Afghanistan are becoming more urgent.

-- ROBERT STEIN

And we're on to the next step of the Congress v. White House subpoena battle.

First, the House found Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten in contempt for refusing to respond to House Judiciary Committee subpoenas from the U.S. attorney firings investigation. Then, the Justice Department, as Attorney General Mukasey had warned it would, refused to convene a grand jury and rebuffed the criminal referral. And now we're on to step three: a lawsuit against the administration to enforce the subpoenas.

-- PAUL KIEL

For the first time ever, I am on the front page of Sunday New York Times (and above the fold). The really cool part is I didn't kill anybody, steal $400 million dollars, or lose billions as a rogue trader.

-- BARRY RITHOLTZ

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich/Atlanta Journal Constitution