In reading today's Supreme Court's decision on Morse v. Frederick, the case of the student in Juneau, Alaska, who unfurled a banner reading "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" and was subsequently suspended (you can read the story here or at the Washington Post to get the details of the case), one conclusion is crystal-clear: Kids, if you're going to unfurl such a banner in an effort to get on national television, make sure that you state your case as: 'LEGALIZE BONG HiTS 4 JESUS'." Because then the First Amendment will protect you.

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Part 3 -- Political Compromise

[This article is in three parts. Part 1 ran Wednesday and dealt with the Republicans' increasing signals that they're ready to desert Bush en masse come September. Part 2 ran yesterday and listed the major tactical options Democrats have for ending the war through legislation.]

Part 2 of this article offered an enumerated list of legislative tactics for Democrats to use in order to end the Iraq war. Since I will be referring to these options in this final installment, allow me to preface my remarks with a summary of this list (so you don't have to keep clicking back and forth to see what I'm talking about):

(1)  Timelines

(2)  Milestones

(3)  Implement the Baker / Hamilton Iraq Survey Group (ISG) report

(4)  Repeal the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF)

(5)  Pass Murtha's troop readiness standards

(6)  Cut the purse strings off

(6a)  Force the Pentagon to draw up a withdrawal plan, then fund only that plan

(6b)  Pass "X" amount of money, and tell Bush that's all he's going to get

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Part 2 -- Democratic Tactical Choices

[This article is in three parts. Part 1 ran yesterday and dealt with the Republicans' increasing signals that they're ready to desert Bush en masse come September. Part 3 will run tomorrow, and deal with the politics involved in creating a bipartisan end to the war.]

General Petraeus, the officer in charge of our military presence in Iraq, is scheduled to report to Congress in mid-September on how the surge is doing. After he does so, Democrats are going to find themselves holding a winning hand for ending the war in Iraq -- as more and more Republicans start voting with them. But how they play their cards is going to be important in determining exactly how the war should be ended, how fast it will happen, and how many troops will be left in Iraq.

Now, there are many ideas on how to end the war from the Democratic side, and in September the party is going to have to hammer out a strategy for how to proceed -- and they'll need both a detailed strategy for the military withdrawal, and also a legislative strategy for how exactly to go about enacting the end of the war.

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Part 1 -- Republicans Facing Reality

[This article is in three parts. Part 2 will run tomorrow, and will deal with the nuts and bolts of how congressional Democrats will begin to end the war this September. Part 3 will run Friday, and detail the compromises which will be necessary to secure a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress.]

Good news is popping up in the political fight to end the war in Iraq. What may surprise you is that it's coming from the Republicans in Congress.

It shouldn't really be surprising. Democrats (other than Joe Lieberman, of course) are already on record voting to end the war. That's "good"... but it's not "news." The "'news" part is that Republicans are finally beginning to see the light. They gave Bush his surge, but -- come September -- Bush will have had his last chance (as they see it) and they're going to start voting to end the war too.

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As reported by the War Room column at Salon.com today.

[OK, this is a cut and paste job, I admit, but I'm working on a two part column for The Huffington Post to run tomorrow and Thursday, so I'm kind of busy today. My article will be on Bush, Congress and Iraq, so this is a good preamble to it.]

Five Democratic candidates appeared before the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), with Chris Matthews asking questions. Here is their response (in alphabetical order) to the question:

"What is your specific exit strategy for bringing American troops home from Iraq?"

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Robert Novak recently wrote an article that is reverberating around the right-wing echo chamber. The key idea is summed up in the final paragraph:

"What can a lame-duck president fighting an unpopular war -- the fate also of Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson in their closing months -- do about this? Not much, but two possibilities are talked about in Republican circles: let Gonzales go, and pardon Libby. That might drop Bush's approval ratings even lower, but it sure would hearten his base."

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So Scooter Libby is soon going to be doing time. Unless President Bush decides to pardon him, that is. I wrote about this situation last week, and I have to say, coming on the heels of the Republican Party's open revolt on the immigration bill, that the possibility of Bush not pardoning Libby (further enraging his base) is likely going to be the gift that keeps on giving (politically) all summer long.

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- Juvenal

Who will watch the watchmen?
- Alan Moore's translation

This should be filed under "no surprise, really," but the Washington Post reports on the FBI's continued misuse of "National Security Letters" or NSLs.

From the Post article:

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.

The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.

As I said before, no surprises there. When the Justice Department is given a tool usually reserved to absolute monarchs such as Louis XVI (see my earlier post about lettres de cachet and the similarities between the Bush administration and the regime that was deposed in the French Revolution), the chances are good that they're going to abuse it.

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This column marks my first anniversary posting here on the Huffington Post.

[This is going to be a completely narcissistic column, so if that sort of thing doesn't interest you, I advise you to just skip down to the "An Announcement" section, or stop reading altogether. You have been warned.]

I first posted here on June 9th last year, but I was traveling this past weekend to see a relative of mine graduate high school so I had to wait until now to write about it.

I got the opportunity to begin writing here as part of a promotional campaign for the book I wrote, How Democrats Can Take Back Congress, and I'd like to thank Arianna and the whole Huffington Post team for allowing me the privilege of posting here. It's been a lot of fun, I must admit.

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I will be traveling this weekend, and so my next post will probably appear on Wednesday.

As for yesterday's story, still no news. Either it's an internet rumor, or it really happened, and the mainstream media decided to collectively ignore it. Not too surprising, but I at least expected some commentary in the blogger community.