The Doolittles’ Rich Deal
How one congressional couple collected campaign checks — and put $215,000 in their pockets

IMAGINE THAT every time members of Congress received a $1,000 campaign contribution, they could skim $150 off the top and put it straight into their personal bank accounts. Sound shady? That is, in effect, how Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and his wife, Julie, operate. According to our review of campaign finance records, Mrs. Doolittle has received at least $215,000 from Mr. Doolittle’s various campaign committees since 2001. This doesn’t include $6,800 in payments to another of Mrs. Doolittle’s companies, Events Plus, before she started doing his fundraising work. She’s taken in nearly $100,000 during the 2006 campaign alone.

The arrangement couldn’t smell more.

Burns May Be Bouncing Back
Polls Suggest Montana Senator Is Shedding Ties to the Abramoff Scandal
By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Staff Writer

BILLINGS, Mont. — The Republican primary debate was over, and three challengers had barely laid a glove on Sen. Conrad Burns.

No one mentioned the $150,000 he accepted from lobbyist Jack Abramoff and later returned. No one brought up the $3 million federal grant secured by a wealthy Indian tribe — and Abramoff client — after Burns pressured the Interior Department. No one quoted Abramoff telling Vanity Fair that he and his clients had received “every appropriation we wanted” from a subcommittee chaired by Burns.

Only one question during Friday’s debate even mentioned Abramoff, whose web of illegal lobbying has spawned the largest congressional scandal in years. And Burns pugnaciously dismissed it, saying, “If you want to know something about the Abramoff deal, you got to ask the Democrats.”

Polls here suggest that Burns, 71, a three-term incumbent who has been targeted by the Democrats as one of the most beatable Republicans in the Senate, may be bouncing back from the pounding he took late last year after the publication of several articles detailing his ties to Abramoff.

For a while after the stories broke, Burns essentially hunkered down, offering little response to the allegations while his political fortunes flagged. Republican strategists in Washington believe Burns stayed silent for too long. In the past three months, however, his campaign has spent heavily on radio and television ads that attack Democrats for attacking him. In a current ad, Burns tells Montana voters that “the daily partisan assault is an assault on you and what you stand for.”

After the debate, Burns was asked about the new poll numbers, which show him tied with or narrowly trailing his two most likely Democratic opponents. He is expected to win handily in the Republican primary.

“Never lose faith in the people,” he said with a tight smile.

Would he answer any questions about Abramoff?

“No!” Burns said, with a tight smile.

For all his bravado, Burns remains in trouble, especially in a state that generally tilts to the Republicans. But his experience also suggests the challenge that Democrats around the country will have in turning this year’s scandals into tangible gains at the polls.

Ashcroft, No Sellout By Al Kamen

Washington State University Vancouver folks were puzzled last week when only 100 people bought advance tickets for former attorney general John D. Ashcroft ‘s speech on national security and civil liberties.

After all, last year’s speaker, newly named Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean , sold out the 1,100 seats before the event. …

[Ashcroft] received a $27,000 speaker’s fee …. And that was substantially less than his usual $60,000. With travel and other costs for receptions and dinners, the tab came to about $36,000.

Dean’s fee, she said, was only $17,000. …

“We did an all-out blitz” to gin up interest among local Republican Party folks and others, Long said. In the end, about 700 showed. Of those, 225 paid the full $10, 400 students were comped and 75 were VIPs. Several rows in the back were roped off to make the room appear smaller.

A couple of dozen protesters were outside and one inside ….

[mjh: More might have attended if he promised not to sing “Let the Eagle Soar.” Names of attendees were added to the Get Out Of Jail Free Database.]

Why do we need thousands of nuclear warheads — what are we accomplishing with them? Why do we need to ramp up production so that we have a pool of nuclear engineers capable of redesigning these weapons in 18 months and producing those new weapons in four years? This is like stashing 1000 shotguns in every room of your house and working round the clock on how to make new shotguns. Why? It took two nuclear weapons (some would say one was sufficient) to end World War II in the Pacific. It won’t take 2 to destroy Iran. What do the other 6,000 get us? mjh

U.S. Prepares to Overhaul Arsenal of Nuclear Warheads By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer

By the end of the year, the government plans to select the design of a new generation of nuclear warheads that would be more dependable and possibly able to be disarmed in the event they fell into terrorist hands, according to the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The new warheads would be based on nuclear technology that has already been tested, which means they could be produced more than a decade from now to gradually replace at lower numbers the existing U.S. stockpile of about 6,000 warheads without additional underground testing …

The new warheads envisioned as part of the [Reliable Replacement Warhead Program] are expected to be larger and heavier than those now deployed and in reserve, which originated from the Cold War years ….

The competition between Los Alamos and Livermore replicates what happened beginning in the 1950s as each laboratory developed different nuclear warheads for the Air Force, the Navy and the Army. “The process is providing a unique opportunity to train the next generation of nuclear weapons designers and engineers,” D’Agostino said last week.

During the Cold War years, from the 1960s through the 1980s, the U.S. nuclear weapons complex constantly designed, developed, produced and tested different warheads depending on military needs, D’Agostino said. Beginning in the 1990s, as the Cold War ended and a test ban pact between the United States and the Soviet Union was reached, a decision was made to halt U.S. development of new warheads and, instead, to shift to supervising the already enormous stockpile, to make sure that those deployed were still reliable and to begin dismantling those that were no longer needed.

The notion at that time, during the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, was that the stockpile would go through a life-extension process every 20 to 30 years. The current Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review changed that. Instead of just extending the life of older warheads with new but similar parts, the aim now is to make totally new components that are more robust, easier to manufacture, safer and more secure, while at the same time not requiring new underground testing.

By constantly upgrading the parts, D’Agostino said, a second goal will be accomplished. By 2030, he said, the “weapons design community that was revitalized by the RRW program will be able to adapt an existing weapon within 18 months, and design, develop and begin production of a new design within four years of a decision to enter engineering development.”

mjh’s blog — Safety does not erode

Richard Garwin, a physicist who helped design the first U.S. H-bomb, said during his UNM talk: “The Reliable Replacement Warhead is the rage this year” …

Garwin said there was also no reason to think aging weapons posed greater risks of accidental detonation.

“There’s no question of safety,” he said. “Safety does not erode.”

General knowledge By Trudy Rubin

Retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, a three-star Marine who was the top Pentagon operations officer before the invasion, wrote last week that the decision to invade Iraq “was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions – or bury the results.”

[mjh: “swagger” is what folks in Texas call “walking like a jackass”]

Bush rejects calls to replace secretary
By Tom Raum, Associated Press

Pulling rank, President Bush yesterday rebuffed recommendations from a growing number of retired generals that he replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “He has my full support,” said the commander in chief.

I like David Brooks’ interpretation that Bush will never fire Rumsfeld because Bush has been involved in every misstep and can’t blame or punish Rumsfeld for mistakes Bush supported completely. mjh

Bush Speaks Out for Rumsfeld By Peter Baker and Josh White, Washington Post Staff Writers

Bush and his advisers [believe] that attacks on Rumsfeld by prominent former military commanders strike at the heart of his presidency. As Bush’s choice to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rumsfeld serves as his proxy, and most of the judgments that have come under fire were shared by the president and Vice President Cheney as well. …

The defense of Rumsfeld in effect was the first act of new White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who took over as Andrew H. Card Jr. left the West Wing yesterday afternoon for the final time as Bush’s top aide. …

A poll of 944 troops serving in Iraq released by Zogby International and LeMoyne College did not ask about Rumsfeld but found that 72 percent think the United States should withdraw within a year and more than a quarter think it should leave immediately.