Craig Crawford's Trail Mix

 
Craig tries to keep up with the President on yet another trip abroad. Who needs Air Force One when you have Green Screen One (Produced by CQ's Andrew Satter).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets cover from Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E. Panetta, who has told lawmakers that CIA officials misled Congress "for a number of years" since 2001.

CIA spokesman George Little said "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress." Mr. Little said the CIA itself "took the initiative to notify the oversight committees" about the lapses.

Earlier this year, Pelosi accused the CIA of misleading her in briefings about the agency's use of waterboarding, an allegation refuted by the agency and challenged by Republicans.

Panetta, who initially challenged Pelosi's version of events, is walking back those claims. Peolosi now gets bragging rights.

In the presidential campaign Barack Obama was the most cautious of the top tier Democrats about pursuing universal health insurance -- especially on the question of requiring all Americans to get insurance. He even attacked Hillary Clinton's plan for such mandates.

Liberals who want full reform had to keep the pressure on this week when the Obama White House seemed to waver on expanding government-sponsored insurance, the so-called public option.

The health reform battle lines are similar to the 1993 fight over health reform, except that in those days the Clinton White House wrote its own plan. This time, a Democratic president is letting his party's congressional leaders write the first draft -- putting even more pressure on grass roots activitists to make sure that the plan ends up looking like something they want to fight for.

Grass Roots Health Reformers Pressure Lawmakers (CQ's Andrew Satter)

President Barack Obama seemed mindful of avoiding his predecessor's naïveté about Vladimir Putin in his first meeting today with the Russian boss.

Cordial, but businesslike describes the visuals of the first Obama-Putin photo opportunity. The president managed a tight-lipped smile and kept his distance for a straightforward handshake.

Eight years ago this month, George W. Bush and Putin clasped hands in what almost became a warm embrace for photographers.

Of course, that was before we learned that Putin was more of a bad guy than the hype of the day suggested.

And what a difference in words. In 2001, Bush said he "looked the man in the eye" and got a "sense of his soul," praising Putin's trustworthiness.

Obama left it to an anonymous aide to initially describe his first meeting with Putin as forming "the basis of a good relation." 

Robert McNamara's death got me thinking about Martha Mitchell. She was the first person on the inside to blow the whistle on Viet Nam. 

Of all the strange ways that the truth came out, one of the oddest sources was the colorful wife of one of Richard Nixon's Cabinet members. Her honesty with reporters behind the scenes put many on the path to the light in a very dark tunnel.

Publicly, Martha Mitchell was almost a cartoon character, her vivaciousness and blunt talk coming across as a bit nutty when chopped up into sound bites and pithy quotes.

Once on a trip aboard Air Force One, while her husband, Attorney General John Mitchell, was in a meeting with Nixon, Martha got bored and wandered into the press area. After demanding that reporters ask her "something important," Mrs. Mitchell was asked, "What do you think of the Viet Nam War?"

"It stinks," she said, launching a full-throated rant against the war. Later, the press corps asked her husband if he would like to hear what she had said. "Heavens no," the attorney general answered. "I might have to jump out the window."

Once the Nixon team got word of Mitchell's remarks, her husband said he would only allow his wife to give interviews in Swahili.

After her death from bone cancer in 1976, Martha Mitchell's funeral featured a telling wreath with flowers that spelled out the message, "Martha was right."

While the political world scratches its collective head over Sarah Palin's unexpected plans to resign the governorship of Alaska, consider her direct threats of a defamation lawsuit against several news media organizations contained in an Independence Day open letter from her attorney.

By quitting public office perhaps Palin hopes to argue that she would no longer bear the higher standard of proof that a public figure bears in pursuing a lawsuit against alleged defamers. Legal experts might deem that to be a dubious claim for such a famous person, but who knows what lurks in Palin's mind.

After a lengthy point-by-point refutation of what lawyer Thomas Van Flein calls "false and defamatory allegations" by "unscrupulous people" he ends the letter by claiming that "continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable."

Actionable? In law talk, folks, that means lawsuit.

News media targeted in the letter include the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, the Huffington Post and the Village Voice.

A video tribute to Thomas Jefferson, author of The Declaration of American Independence (July 4, 1776). Read by Bill Barker of Williamsburg, VA. Edited by Craig Crawford.

Rare copy of Declaration of Independence found

Happy Holiday Trail Mixers!

In this Trail Mix Web Cam, Craig gets all worked up about plans to tax soft drinks for health care.

If Mark Sanford loves someone other than his wife, so what? Give the South Carolina governor some credit for latent honesty.  To be really crass about the situation, this is certainly an event that introduces Sanford to the populace in ways that nothing else could. Bill Clinton's affair made him a national celebrity - and ultimately president - thanks to the exposure about his dalliances on 60 Minutes on Super Bowl Sunday in 1992. At least Sanford is being more honest about his true feelings than Clinton ever was.

Now they tell us. John McCain's staffers are lining up to anonymously trash Sarah Palin and feed a news media assault against the 2008 GOP running mate.

These pathetic wimps offer nothing but unattributed quotes to Vanity Fair saying they felt she wasn't up to snuff and whining that she refused to properly study up on policy issues.

McCain aides who actually go on the record offer their support for Palin. Randy Scheunemann, director of foreign policy and national security for the McCain-Palin campaign, told the Washington Times "It's disheartening and dishonorable that anyone that worked for John McCain would participate in this kind of character assassination against his running mate."

Off the record quotes almost always come from somebody with an agenda. That's why you will rarely see them on this blog. And there are plenty of potential GOP rivals against Palin who have an incentive to feed derogatory quotes to the media.

It seems more fair to stick with what former McCain aides say on the record.