Power Line notes that Bush has nominated James Rogan to be a federal district judge in Los Angeles’s Central District.

Rogan was, of course, a noted figure in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

This could be very interesting. I’m an admirer of Rogan’s, so I hope it works out for him. What problems could he possibly run into?

Hot Air reports that Tommy Thompson is forming an exploratory committee to look at the possibility of a 2008 presidential candidacy.

I called him a “moron” in this 2004 post, for cluing in the terrorists on a great way to attack us.

Temporary good news on judicial nominations. President Bush has shown a willingness to fight for conservative judges, by renominating several judges who were previously opposed by Democrats. The nominations sent to the Senate today include Haynes, Boyle, and Myers:

The Bush administration, trying to push through judicial nominations before Republicans lose control of the Senate, resubmitted six nominees deemed by Democrats too conservative for the federal bench.

Five nominees were the subject of an angry exchange in August when Democrats said their selection was a sop to the president’s conservative base.

The White House on Wednesday submitted Terrence Boyle of North Carolina and William James Haynes II of Virginia to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.; Michael Brunson Wallace of Mississippi to the 5th Circuit in New Orleans; Peter Keisler of Maryland to the District of Columbia Circuit; and William Gerry Myers III and Norman Randy Smith, both of Idaho, for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

I can’t imagine they’ll get through, but it sends the right signal. Leahy had this predictable response:

Barely a week after the President promised to change course by working in a bipartisan and cooperative way with Congress, it is disappointing that he has decided to ‘stay the course’ on judicial nominees by renominating a slate of his most controversial past choices. These are nominees who failed to win confirmation under a Republican-controlled Senate and they were returned to the President.

With these renominations, the President is choosing partisanship over progress and division over unity, at the expense of a fair and independent judiciary. This is exactly the kind of political game-playing that prompted Americans to demand change and a new direction in Washington. The signal the President is sending by renominating these controversial candidates is regrettable. But I hope the President will work with us in charting a new direction in the next congressional session, by choosing consensus nominees who unite instead of divide America.

The American people expect the federal courts to be a place where justice is dispensed without favor to the right or the left. These are the only lifetime appointments in our entire government, and I will continue to work with both Democratic and Republican Senators to advance consensus nominees to ensure the independence of our federal judiciary.

But polls show that Americans like cautious judges who hew closely to the text of the Constitution and relevant statutes, so this is one area where conservatives want Bush to “stay the course” — and the public will, for the most part, agree.

One thing is certain, though; the landscape will change once we have (oh Lord this is hard to say) Pat Leahy’s Judiciary Committee. We’ll be dealing with King Chuckie S., who has vowed to “veto the next Alito.”

If you can watch the Murtha Abscam video, which I discussed this morning, and then watch John Murtha lying about it on Hardball — and you can do all this without retching — why, then, you must be a Democrat.

UPDATE: Commenter Too late notes:

Chris Matthews’s old boss, Tip O’Neill, was in up to his eyeballs in protecting Murtha in 1980. I don’t think Mr. Hardball would follow that lead, though.

Good point.

As if it weren’t enough that he Dems are looking to put in power Alcee “Impeached for Bribery” Hastings and John “I Don’t Want That Bribe! . . . Right Now” Murtha, now we learn that Jack Abramoff has allegedly implicated Harry Reid in corruption.

Amazing the things you learn from the news media . . . just after an election.

Why, the Republicans can’t lose! Unless they put in power someone who is “[s]uspect on racial issues and pork-friendly.”

D’oh!

Well, don’t say that you weren’t warned. Repeatedly.

UPDATE: Power Line is skeptical of the Abramoff allegations. There is good reason to be. I wouldn’t put it past Reid, but you have to watch out for criminal defendants looking for deals.

UPDATE x2: The New York Times is running a story critical of the “cut and run” idea. Generals are quoted as being against it.

Man, it’s amazing what you learn from the media after an election.

The L.A. Times has issued the following correction:

Police beating: Articles in Friday’s California section and Saturday’s Section A about a police beating in Hollywood said a brief video recording of the incident showed an officer punching a suspect six times in the face. The video image shows five blows to the suspect’s face. In one other instance — the fourth of six downward motions by the officer’s right hand — he appears to grab the suspect’s arm, not punch him in the face.

The correction comes after I wrote the Readers’ Representative to make this exact point.

As of the publication of this post, the article where I originally noticed the error does not have the correction appended to it. (That story, by the way, claimed that the officer had punched the suspect in the face “at least” six times.) Nor is there a correction appended to the other story that made the same claim.

I assume appended corrections are on the way.

My leftist friends say I am making a huge deal out of the difference between five and six blows. No — the L.A. Times made a big deal out of the police misreporting of the number of blows. I merely noted that it was ironic that, in a story that faulted officers for getting the number of punches wrong, the L.A. Times got the number of punches wrong.

One wonders whether the L.A. Times will be satisfied with the officers’ reporting if they now simply write a supplemental report that reads: “For the record: We misreported the number of distraction strikes that Officer Farrell administered to suspect Cardenas in our original report. The true number was five.”

Because we all make mistakes.

What’s more, as I previously wrote the Readers’ Representative:

[I]f Times reporters can get the number of punches wrong after watching a video in the comfort of their offices, it might not be that ludicrous for officers to misremember the exact number of punches after a stressful struggle with a felony suspect who allegedly took several swings at them and actively resisted being taken into custody.

I assume that, as expected, the correction does not appear on the front page, but rather in a small box on Page A2, as all corrections do. I’ll let you know for sure later, when the paper makes the image of the front page available.

UPDATE 5:54 p.m. I see that both stories now have appended corrections.

John “Grandpa Simpson” Murtha is set to be tapped as the House Majority Leader. He has some ethical issues, including a history of being investigated in Abscam. In that investigation, he obliquely discussed with an undercover investigator the possibility that he might accept bribes in the future, once the investigator provided him sufficient political cover. But more about that in a moment.

And Alcee Hastings looks like the pick for the House Intelligence Committee. He was impeached and removed from his position as a federal judge for bribery. Now we’re putting him in charge of national secrets. No bribery potential there!

This is all terrible for the country — but it’s great for Republicans.

Politically speaking, I couldn’t have scripted this better. Corruption was the top issue for disgruntled voters, so Nancy Pelosi is turning to these guys.

Perfect.

More about Grandpa Simpson in the extended entry.

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