The Nation has dug up an old photo (well, just from 1996) of Allen with leaders of the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens.

The CCC's statement of principles gives a pretty good flavor of things:

We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.

Allen's not the only Republican to have winked at the CCC. But he's the only one who was -- until recently -- considered a serious candidate for the presidency in 2008.

Stuart Taylor, Jr. unloads - and I mean unloads - on the New York Times for its recent front pager on the Duke Lacrosse case authored by Duff Wilson and Jonathan Glater. (You can read what I wrote about the NYT piece last week here).

In a related nugget of embarassing news for Durham DA Mike Nifong, yesterday a judge threw out the three year old misdemeanor shoplifting charges Nifong's office brought against Moezeldin Ahmed Elmostafa, the taxi driver who is central to indicted Duke Lacrosse player Reade Seligmann's alibi. The Durham Herald-Sun reports:

Several defense lawyers had accused District Attorney Mike Nifong of bringing the misdemeanor shoplifting charge against Elmostafa as a pressure tactic in the controversial rape case.

In April, Elmostafa signed a sworn affidavit saying he drove Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann to a bank machine, a fast-food restaurant and a campus dorm at about the time an exotic dancer claimed she was raped by Seligmann and two others at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in mid-March.

A month later, Elmostafa was arrested on a 2003 warrant charging him with shoplifting at the Hecht's department store at Northgate Mall. The charge was reduced to aiding and abetting earlier this month.

The prosecutor in the case said he was the one who had the warrant served against Elmostafa and denied there was any motive to intimidate. He says the reason the DA's office waited three years to bring charges is because there had been a misspelling of Elmostafa's name. With Nifong's credibility already in the tank, that seems farfetched. Read the rest of the story and decide for yourself.

First Juan Cole, now Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Christopher Hitchens nimbly points out the hypocrisy and sheer chutzpah of Isikoff and Corn being instrumental players in ginning up allegations that Plamegate was a blatant Bush administration hit job, and then turning around (and making money on a book, no less) and fingering Richard Armitage as Novak's original source. In other words, there was never any "there there."

This is how Corn responded on his blog last night after Hitchens' story went up:

A bunch of emails arrived today from people asking for (or, demanding) a response to Christopher Hitchens' attack in Slate on me and my coauthor Michael isikoff. I'm going to refrain from taking the bait, as we prepare for next week's release of our book. HUBRIS has plenty in it to discomfort anyone taking his or her cues from my former colleague.

Interesting. Corn's credibility is evaporating faster than a martini in Hyannisport and he says he is not going to "take the bait" - which is a euphemism for "answer legitimate questions." Corn concludes by saying that his book is "far more about the fraudulent selling of the war than the leak case." The question at hand, however, is the media's fraudulent selling of the leak case and David Corn's central role in it.

Plamegate is turning out to be, as some have suspected, exactly the opposite of what we've been led to believe. It was not a revenge-inspired hit job by the Bush administration, but an example of D.C.'s insider culture at its worst: a public, partisan and dubious attack launched in the op-ed pages of the country's biggest newspaper, followed by innocent gossip between a reporter and a high-level official (and the subsequent shameful silence of that official influenced by interdepartment fears and rivalries), followed by a firestorm of media speculation and innuendo, followed by an investigation, followed by an indictment of obstruction of justice for a crime that was never committed, followed by revelations that the whole thing wasn't what it was portrayed to be by critics of the administration and the media.

Like many people, I despised Andre Agassi when he first showed up on the national tennis scene with his long hair and his "image is everything" persona. Now, like millions of fans, Agassi is one of my favorite figures in all of sports.

Agassi is playing in his final U.S. Open, which will also be the final tournament of his career. Yesterday he needed 3 1/2 hours to come back and beat Andrei Pavel in his opening match, as 20,000 fans stood in Flushing Meadows and cheered him on at match point.

Las Vegas Weekly put together a tribute to Agassi which includes a brief piece by David Granger, the editor of Esquire, and another by Ron Kantowski, a sportswriter for the Las Vegas Sun.

The gem of the bunch, in my opinion, is this piece by Andrew Corsello, a writer for GQ Magazine, in which Corsello recounts his first encounter with the 8 year-old tennis phenom from Las Vegas. It is an absolute scream. But it also pinpoints the origin of Agassi's brashness: his extraordinary talent and gift for the game which precious few players have known.

It's been a marvelous journey to watch Agassi's transformation from a cocky young kid into a humble, hardworking man who has fans cheering his every point and now hoping the magic will last just two more weeks. Whatever the outcome at the U.S. Open, I, for one, am going to miss seeing Agassi's now trademarked bald head, his pigeon-toed shuffle, but most of all, his heart.

(Photo: Ann Heisenfelt, Associated Press)

UPDATE: Here's a nice tribute to Agassi's final appearance at Wimbledon on YouTube:

How unpopular, you ask?

So unpopular that CNN.com's running an online poll of who would win a debate between Bush and Ahmadinejad, and Ahmadinejad is winning by 63%-37% (with more than 70,000 votes cast).

Yes, yes -- it's an online poll. But would Hitler have out-polled FDR, even on a CNN "QuickVote"?

Majority Leader Bill Frist presses the issue of the secret hold placed on S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. Frist writes on his blog:

It is deeply ironic that bipartisan legislation dedicated to transparency in government has been obstructed by the least transparent possible means. But I've not given up ... and neither has a united blogosphere.

Led by sites like PorkBusters, TPM Muckraker, and GOP Progress, online activists across the political spectrum have worked to clear away the obstruction against this bill through hard work and the process of elimination. While the count is still climbing, they have publicly received a response from 89 Senators regarding the secret hold - and I'm proud to say that members of my online grassroots organization, the iFrist Volunteers, have made a major contribution to this effort in calling Senators and securing their promise they have not held up the bill, nor will they hold up the bill. The growing success of this effort perfectly demonstrates the value of the database that S. 2590 would create ... because it proves that Americans with a passion for citizen journalism and empowered by technology can cooperate across party lines to make a real difference.

So, to get this bill passed, I am calling on all members, when asked by the blog community, to instruct their staff to answer whether or not they have a hold, honestly and transparently, so I can pass this bill. And I encourage Minority Leader Reid to do the same.

All I can say is that whoever is blocking this bill had better hope they're not up for reelection in November - assuming we find out who it is before then.

You like nice, concise analysis? Here's Orin Judd summing up Rudy Giuliani's presidential prospects in 21 words:

He can't run in IA, can't beat McCain in NH and then is a non-starter in SC. He won't run.

How about a nice, 54-word movie review? Try Louis Wittig in the Daily Standard:

There's almost nothing you need to know about the movie Snakes on a Plane that you didn't get from the title. Samuel L. Jackson gets on a trans-Pacific flight. A few hundred poisonous snakes get loose in the cabin. Samuel L. Jackson handles it in a way that Richard Gere probably wouldn't have. The end.

Some folks are making the argument that the Club for Growth is hurting the Republican Party. Over in The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru offers a refreshing defense of ideology over partisanship.

Essentially, holding a majority doesn't mean anything if that majority has no principles.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has put out a harsh ad attacking Steve Laffey, conservative primary challenger to Sen. Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island.

The ad hits Laffey hard on immigration:

As always, send nominations to:

ryan-at-realclearpolitics.com

Anytime you see an obviously far left-leaning publication do a story on a Republican (or a far right one writing about a Democrat, for that matter) you have to approach it under the assumption that it's probably been constructed as a hit job - though some are done much more deftly than others.

That being said, this piece on Illinois Republican Congressman Jerry Weller in the Chicago Reader is fascinating. In 2004, Weller married to a top member of Guatemala's parliament, Zury Rios Sosa, who also happens to be the daughter of former dictator and head of her political party, General Efrain Rios Montt. Complicating matters is that Weller serves as Vice-Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere whose jurisdiction includes issues involving Latin America.

The Reader piece alleges that Weller's marriage to Sosa has caused him to be silent on matters involving Guatemala, including drug trafficking and human rights. I don't know enough to say whether there's any truth to the charge, but Weller's unique relationship seems, at least on the surface, to represent somewhat of a conflict of interest. Read the story and decide for yourself.