The idea of releasing Gitmo prisoners in the US is such a political nonstarter, I am shocked that the Attorney General of the United States let the mere suggestion escape his lips publicly.

If President Obama thinks the mess he finds himself in with respect to AIG is bad, wait until he sees the size of the populist prarie fire he'll create by doing something this politically tone deaf.

Ugh. Now auto suppliers are getting bailout cash, to the tune of $5 billion, which will come out of the TARP fund.

I know, I know: given the amount of dollars in play, five billion is chump change. A rounding error. But we're no longer talking about companies being too big to fail. By the new standard, any company that's in a struggling industry is eligible for bailout cash. The government is basically picking winners and losers out of a hat.

Democrats have to be smiling about the news that President Bush will be publishing his first book in 2010. No word on whether the book will be coming out early in the year, or whether President Bush will be on popping up a book tour right before voters head to the polls in November.

So Chris Dodd admitted he misled CNN, telling them on Tuesday he had nothing to do with the loophole that mysteriously found its way into legislation and paved the way for AIG's bonuses to be paid.  The following day, Dodd confessed to CNN's Dana Bash that he in fact wrote the loophole, though he said he did it at the behest of the administration and with the knowledge that he would lose the amendment altogether if he did not comply.

But even Dodd's mea culpa doesn't ring totally true. He refused to say who at the Treasury Department requested the modifications to the amendment, downplaying it as a negotiation that took place at the "staff level." And at the very end of the CNN interview, Dodd says he "didn't know the exact details" of the modifications that made their way into the bill, a notion that strikes me as very hard to believe.

Dodd released a statement last night further clarifying his statement that 1) he made modifications at the behest of the Obama administration and 2) he was unaware of the AIG bonuses at the time and had no idea the modification would effectively create a loophole for them. (Read the full statement after the jump)

Stepping back for a second, Chris Dodd is already in a bit of trouble in his reelection bid, based on recent polling. Obviously, this further complicates matters.  Dodd is now directly associated with two of the most distasteful aspects of the current financial meltdown: getting a sweetheart mortgage from the CEO of a company that was a major player in the subprime mess, and now authoring the loophole that allowed AIG to pay $165 million in bonuses after already taking scores of billions of bailout dollars , all at taxpayer expense.

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Earlier today I participated in a web chat with Andrew Sullivan hosted by Ken Rudin and David Gura of National Public Radio. You can replay the chat by following this link.

After a rough 24 hours of bad press, including a story posted on Drudge yesterday, question about the issue at yesterday's press briefing, and op-eds in today's Wall Street Journal and New York Post, President Obama has abandoned the idea of switching to "third party billing" for the VA.

In a nutshell, the change would make veterans' private insurance companies take responsibilty for covering medical costs related to war related injuries instead of the Veterans Administration, a move critics argued would end up hurting veterans and their families. Full text of a statement by Robert Gibbs below the jump.

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With only some three and a half years to go until the next presidential election, President Obama has pulled out a huge lead over potential challenger Sarah Palin, a new PPP national survey finds (March 13-15, 691 RV, MoE +/- 3.7%).

Obama holds a 55%-35% lead over the Alaska governor, which -- if this were November 2012 -- would be "the largest popular vote blowout since George McGovern ran against Richard Nixon in 1972," according to PPP.

"It's impossible to say what twists and turns the American political landscape will see between now and 2012,” PPP Pres. Dean Debnam said. “What is clear is that four months ago John McCain lost to Barack Obama by seven points nationally, and at this point in time Sarah Palin trails Obama by a much greater 20 point margin."

Quinnipiac's latest Ohio survey (March 10-15, 1299 RV, MoE +/- 2.7%) finds President Obama's approval rating in the state down 10 points from last month and the race for the open Senate seat wide open.

Obama's approval rating dropped from 67% in February to 57% in March -- including a 17-point drop among independents -- and his disapproval rating doubled from 16% to 33%.

In the race to replace the retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R), the survey finds that most voters aren't yet paying attention and that a large number remain undecided. Democrats tested include Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner, Rep. Tim Ryan and State Rep. Tyrone Yates. Republicans tested include former Congressman and Bush cabinet member Rob Portman and State Aud. Mary Taylor.

GOP Primary
Portman 31
Taylor 14
Und 52

Dem Primary
Fisher 18
Brunner 14
Ryan 12
Yates 6
Und 46

General Election
Fisher 41 - Portman 33
Fisher 41 - Taylor 31

Brunner 39 - Portman 34
Brunner 38 - Taylor 31

Fareed Zakaria certainly touched a nerve over at Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog with this assertion:

The problem with American foreign policy goes beyond George Bush. It includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement. Other countries can have no legitimate interests of their own—Russian demands are by definition unacceptable. The only way to deal with countries is by issuing a series of maximalist demands. This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world.

Peter Feaver responds here. Christain Brose argues:

The real sticking point is how a Syria or a Russia defines some of its "interests." Damascus's desire to dominate Lebanon is not an interest. Nor is Russia's attempt to create a sphere of influence in its old imperial stomping grounds and prevent sovereign nations from making free choices about their own foreign policies. Such "interests" should be, in Zakaria's words, "by definition unacceptable."

I think this only serves to confirm Zakaria's point. According to Brose, the U.S. is the arbiter of which interests are legitimate, and which are not. And the standard is not exactly uniform. The Russians can't exercise a "veto" over nations directly on their border, but when the U.S. decides it wants to travel halfway around the world and depose Saddam Hussein on the grounds that he's an intolerable threat to our interests, that's acceptable. The Russians can't have a sphere of influence immediately adjacent their national border, but the U.S. can claim the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Western Hemisphere as arenas of its primacy and veto the foreign policy decisions of governments therein. The Russians can't corner the Central Asian energy market through cozy relationships with dictators and related thugs, but the U.S.-Saudi alliance is another matter - one born of a mutual and abiding respect for pluralism and human rights. Or something.

Zakaria is making the fairly obvious observation that global hegemony has had a toxic effect on how the U.S. defines her interests. We have conflated the maintenance of our global power with the protection of the American way of life. That connection clearly held during the Cold War, when the U.S. faced a global adversary. But it's anachronistic today and, indeed, dangerous. No great power lasts forever. It is folly to think that we have unlocked the secret to perpetual dominance.

Standing athwart history and yelling stop may be a reasonable strategy on issues of domestic culture, but it's dangerous in foreign policy. Raging against the inevitable is a strategy that will ensure America's relative decline over the next several decades is unnecessarily disruptive, costly, and perhaps even bloody. Zakaria is right to warn against it.

New poll for National Public Radio by the Republican firm POS and the Democratic firm GQR showing President Obama's job approval rating at 59%, with 35% disapproval. Overall, Obama's job approval stands at 60.2% in the RCP Average.

Congress' job approval rating are the inverse of the President, with only 36% approving of the job its doing with 59% disapproving. Congress' job approval is 36.8% in the RCP Average.

Also, surprisingly, in the generic ballot question Republicans and Democrats are tied at 42% each.