News and Notes: The National Scene

A few items of interest from outside Ohio:

Giuliani Spent More Time at Baseball Games Than at Ground Zero - So reports Alex Koppelman in Salon, referring to the three-month period after 9/11 during which a New York Times study shows that Rudy spent only 29 hours there. The candidate has compared himself to rescue workers, asserting that he spent about as much time at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center as the workers now reporting health issues from their exposure to toxic dust.

Biden Runs First Iowa TV Ad - Sen. Joe Biden (D-IA) is running the first of two 30 second TV ads in Iowa that are designed to distinguish himself from the other candidates on foreign policy experience and how he would handle withdrawing from Iraq. Here are both ads, which are quite good:





Biden proposes to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions and keep a residual force of U.S. troops there to prevent chaos and fomenting of a regional war.

Reporter Disputes Rove's Characterization of Valerie Plame Episode - During his weekend media blitz, retiring White House political guru Kare Rove minimized his role in disclosing the identity of Valerie Plame (wife of former ambassador and White House nemesis Joseph Wilson) as an undercover CIA operative. However, former Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper said today that Rove's account is "dissembling, to put it charitably." Rove denied columnist Bob Novak's assertion that Rove confirmed Plame's CIA status to him, but Cooper responds that "[t]o imply that he didn't know about it or that this was all the leak by someone else, or he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway, is nonsense."

White House Blows Off Another Deadline for Turning Over Subpoenaed Material on Warrantless Surveillance - White Counsel Fred Fielding has indicated that the deadline of 2:30 p.m. today for the material to Congress (originally due on July 18th and pushed back at the White House's request) will not be met. Fielding wants until after Labor Day. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, is in no mood to grant more time.