Blue Radar

As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:

• The UN Secretary General is asking the Security Council to back a UN and European force in the African country of Chad in order to protect civilians fleeing from ongoing violence.
• News coverage of the war in Iraq has fallen sharply in the second quarter of 2007.
• When President Bush met with an Egyptian opposition leader in June, Bush complained that he too felt like a dissident in his own country.  "I too am a dissident in Washington," Bush said. "Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change."  (Yeah, and why do you think that is?)
• Michael Deaver, former aide to President Ronald Reagan, passed away over the weekend at age 69.
• Yesterday on Meet the Press, columnist Matt Cooper admitted that Karl Rove leaked the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to him.
• A sobering assessment from seven foreign policy analysts that just returned from Iraq contradicts almost everything regarding progress that President Bush touted in his weekly radio address.  Here is an excerpt from their op-ed column in the New York Times: "The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields inIraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centeredframework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes areoffset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the 'battle space'remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded withactors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaedaterrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. Thissituation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties andJanus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have beentrained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense."  (If you want an objective analysis of Iraq without all the spin, this is definitely worth the read.)
• Immigration activist Elvia Arellano was arrested by federal authorities.
• Since winning the Ames Iowa Straw Poll last weekend, Mitt Romney has received approximately a six-percent bounce in the polls.
• David Broder of the Washington Post reports that Mike Huckabee will run a Pat Buchanan-like, populist-driven campaign in New Hampshire.  (Nobody should count this guy out for the GOP nomination.  The next president will probably be a populist.  Republicans would be smart to put one like Huckabee at the top of their ticket.)
• Former Governor Mark Warner (D-VA) will need to up make his mind by April 11th whether to run for US Senate or lobby to become the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket.
• The ultimate zinger of the debate came after each Democratic rival was given time to evaluate whether Barack Obama is fit to be president.  Following all the critiques of whether or not Obama has experience, the Illinois Senator responded, “Well, you know, to prepare for this debate I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair."  As political analyst Richard Allen Greene put it, "The line brought down the house."  (That's exactly what Obama should do -- attack the absurdity of the topic.  Why are candidates harping about Obama's experience, when some of the most experienced people in Washington are Dick Cheney and Ronald Rumsfeld.  Is experience really the most important factor, or is it good judgment?)

If we left something out, it's because we either wrote about ityesterday or are scheduled to do so in an individual post later today. Otherwise, feel free to add any stories in the commentbox.